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Saturday 21 February 2015

Mon brillant hiver sur le magnifique lac Érié

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I've flown over #LakeErie into @CLE countless times, but I've never seen such solid ice cover: image via Aaron Kraus @AaronKraus, 13 February 2015

Winter in Cleveland -- ah, the gelid memories!

Solitary confinement! Strict curfew! Jesuit rules!

Climb out window anyway, leap two storeys into deep snow, make tracks to Bob Lee's bar on Euclid!

Bleak dates with bleak night nurses!

Bleak basement slowdancing with sad bleak night nurses in frozen desolate apartment houses to Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole records!

Wool coats over cashmere sweaters, skinny shivering lonely overworked Slavic girls, no heat, one red light bulb hanging from an exposed wire!

Deep snow!

Bleak Cleveland hospitals!

Daredevil leap fall down stairwell through double pane glass with wire mesh between, rubber tearaway skin tears away, emergency, surgery, skin grafts, night hospital in Cleveland alone staring at dark high ceiling looking out dirty window over bleak building tops into frigid snowy nowhere Ohio night, with frozen polluted river beyond, not catching fire yet!

Not letting anybody find out any of this happened!

More snow!

Bleak study dates! Never wanting to study! Sleet! Frozen streets! Late to eight o'clock History every morning! Not being able to account for these actions to the patient Professor Eugene Oberst!

Bleak dates with bleak tall skinny plaid skirt ice cold blue kneeboned smiling pessimistic Lake Erie College girls!

Driving girls' cars across the bleak stinking frozen Cuyahoga River with dirty snow slushing in the wipers!
 
Bleak suburban dates with high school girls whose dads owned Borgwards!

Bumping into the Japanese gardener while sneaking out of the high school date's house in the morning during a sudden early spring cold snap and not saying anything and making it down the steps and not slipping on the ice!



Lake Erie is more than 90% frozen in this NASA Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer satellite image captured on Sunday and released on Wednesday. The aftermath of a deadly winter storm paralysed much of the north-eastern United States, and forecasters warn of the worst cold in two decades from another arctic front this week
: photo by NASA/Reuters via The Guardian, 18 February 2015



Following #cold snap, #LakeErie is nearly entirely ice covered (Photo: GLERL) @NOAA_GLERL: image via DetroitRiverCleanup @DetroitRiverRAP, 19 February 2015

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Interesting RT @ErinLaviola: Scientists say #LakeErie is 98% frozen now #NOAA: image via MichaelBowers @Michael Bowers, 19 February 2015


Walk on frozen #LakeErie. Looked like the moon! #PortStanley: image via ExplorationProject @Explorationproj, 26 January 2015


finally, maybe no more lake affect snows MT #OhioLakeErie  Amazing shot from our Life on #LakeErie @LakeErie Surfer: image via HughEDillon @iPhilyChitChat, 16 January 2015


A wintry view of #LakeErie, at Eastlake, USA, from #Flock! (Credit: @planetlabs):: image via eoPortal @eoportal, 21 January 2015


Love this. #lakeerie MT @AerialCleveland Frozen lake...#thisiscle #cleveland: image via Cleveland CVB @TheCLE, 11 February 2015

And then, after the thaw, come summer, for the hardy survivors, the reward: chillin' by the foul lake with a tall cool green one...


Want more info about the #LakeErie Crisis? ATTEND a webinar TMRW @ 10AM: image via Alliance Great Lakes @A4GL, 7 August 2014


It may look pretty, but here's what you need to know about the damaging #LakeErie algal bloom: image via NatureConservancy_NY@nature_ny, 13 September 2014


 C'mon cleveland!! We're better than this! #mylake #lakeerie: image via chad pado @CoachPado, 1 September 2014

WATER WARNING issued for South Bass Island #LakeErie #WaterCrisis: image via NBC24 @nbc24wnwo, 1 September 2014


saddens me to see this beautiful lake changing for the worse because so few care. #LakeErie #NoFilter #Green
: image via livelovewander @jungleboy8you, 25 September 2014
 
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@wkycweather Lake is looking very eerie today. #LakeErie #MentorOhio: image via Ron Gardner @DJRockinRon, 7 October 2014


#Weather plays an important role in #LakeErie oxygen levels, scientists believe
: image via Green Atom @greenatomnet, 7 January 2015



The Senate OKs bill to control toxic #algae blooms #toxicalgae #ohio #lakeerie: image via Beagle Bioproducts @BeagleBio, 18 February 2015

4 comments:

tpw said...

Nice one, Tom. Like Whitman, if Whitman were funny. Sorry about Cleveland, but at least you had Jesuit rules.

Nin Andrews said...

Oh, that's about the way of things here. So sad, how the lake should be an asset but it's such a mess and has been . . . But then I'm in Youngstown, so much worse off than Cleveland. You don't even want to know what's in our rivers here.

Hazen said...

That’s one great photo of the surface of Lake Erie frozen mid-wave. Further south, we too are snowed in and froze up. Yesterday about dusk the weather paused briefly and I managed to glimpse a crescent moon, Venus, and Mars forming a celestial triangle in the west, before clouds returned minutes later to blot it all out. Memorable. As is slow dancing to Johnny Mathis in dimly lit rooms.

TC said...

Terry,

You mean Whitman wasn't TRYING to be funny?

Nin,

As I dimly understand it, the increase in toxic algal blooms in Lake Erie in recent years is largely down to the inflow of dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP) from "non-point sources", such as agricultural runoff, coming principally from the Maumee and Sandusky basins, whence topsoil chemical poisons are swept into the western end of the lake; and from the flow of sewage out of the Detroit River: all this human generosity resulting in those charming baby-triffid growths that promise to turn the lake into a fossil bed eventually... and could it even be that the lack of oxygen in the lake, once all life in it finally dies, will perhaps in turn prevent lake-effect snows, which are produced by the prevailing westerlies sweeping over that long east-west stretch of once-freshwater (excuse my cottage science here)... so that, maybe not too far down the line, a happy ending of sorts may actually be in store for all deathloving citizens of that great Red State: total end-of-world non-newsmaking desolation.

Hazen,

Venus and Johnny Mathis, now there's a dream date. Perhaps many who are too young will not recall Wonderful, Wonderful, It's Not For Me To Say, Chances Are, The Twelfth of Never. Wild Is The Wind, Misty, or any of Johnny's other slowdancing hits. It's curious to recall that Johnny was a champion high jumper coming out of high school in the Richmond District of SF, and had to choose between athletics and a singing career. The fact he was the first big pop star to come out openly as gay perhaps adds an Eerie Dimension to all that innocent, fumbling heterosexual making-out that went on to the sound of his infinitely smooth voice.

And back then we didn't even know where the celestial triangle is located!