Cold Wind

  Cold wind blowing today in the North East, fitting for the first day of winter. The whole country is having a bit of a cold spell. Even the poor folks in Palm Beach might see a frost (raises hell with the begonias).     I was feeling a bit sorry for the folks in the sun belt before I saw that it was down to –55F in Siberia. That’s cold, a fifty year low.     The topic of weather gets me to a story I’ve been following - the continuing drought in the mid-west. The odds say that two years of severe drought is unlikely, but that is what’s happening. The 30/90-day rainfall is a fraction of normal:       The lack of rain has many negative side effects. One is the water level on the Mississippi. The water is so low that ships, sunk and lost twenty-five years ago, are now visible.     A number of emergency steps ar...