Boring

Watched some of that game.  It's Bama's Time.  Once Colt McCoy was knocked out of the game, it really wasn't a game any more.  Too bad for Texas but a pretty good deal for The Tide.  Plenty of celebratin' in Bama tonight!

Looks like we have a good ol' temperature inversion going on here.  I read that the higher elevations would be warmer than the valley tonight.  Sure enough.  Heck, Sun Valley is +16 and we are -5.  It's usually the other way around.  This is clearly going to be the last cold night of this episode.  It will be back in the teens each night for awhile after tonight.  Our trip to Harriman will see a high pushing the upper 20's maybe even 30 on Saturday.

Well, if what we've been doing for weeks hasn't been enough, now this--our water heater is going out. Hey, when it rains it pours--cold water, anyway.

Well, I had an intuition this summer that was gonna happen but ignored it.  Luckily, we can get a new water heater and the power company will buy it and charge us zero percent interest and amortize the danged thing over a few years so it won't be a painful cash hit.

Dear Friend Dave E. reminded me that the solar disk is getting active again.  We've been in a deep and long trough for this solar minimum--some 770 spotless days when normally a trough has fewer than 500 sun spotless days.  Well, it looks like the sun is getting active again.  If so, we might see even more action in our whacky weather.  I am of the opinion that the solar activity influences the jetstream and lately, the jet has been the star of our winter show, letting down continental-size air masses from the Arctic.  Even though our cold spell here in Idaho Falls has been brief, I fully expect it to return again and again this winter.  Winter is yet young--there's 10 weeks left until the first day of spring.  We might not have a lot of snow on tap, but I suspect we have a heck of a lot of cold ahead.  Fun thought, huh?