Again we have especially low temperatures, as one will find officially recorded at the Salem and South Lyon weather stations, just West of the edge of Wayne County, along the Base line, or Eight Mile. We repeatedly receive a strange pocket of air much colder than the surrounding areas, as is visible on the website of Mark the Weatherman (no relation), and the Weather Underground, which lists all the stations. He has a map of Michigan for February 28, 2014, last year, and one can see the pocket colored -24 to 28, like the pocket of a left handed catcher’s glove. Yesterday it was 11 below at 11pm, 17 below at 1:30 AM, 20 at 5:30, 19 at 6:30 and 18 at sunrise. On the North side of the street, my friend got 17 below the other day, 2 days ago, and I had 17.5. Meanwhile, the official report was that it might be -7 in outlying areas, though I think I heard -16 reported for Ann Arbor. These are just records for this date. Our 30.2, recorded officially as 28.1 in South Lyon, may be the coldest ever recorded in these places.
We appreciate the story on NPR about frozen fog and “Diamond dust,” which precipitates or crystallizes out of the air, probably when the dew point is like 17 below. He also spoke about rainbow spots and sundogs. I still wonder if clouds are always, sometimes or never frozen. So on these mornings, our consolation is the glorious “ice like diamonds on the street” (Judy Collins song- does she not select poems that are like diamond ice precipitating through the poet’s air?) We hope you all take time to notice the prisms and sparkles in the ice, and the patterns like leaves in the frost on the window.
mmcdonald77 