Syzdekistan

We’ve had two days of fairly breezy southerly winds which means a cold front is on the way. Saturday I put up the Christmas lights and it was actually fairly warm on the south side of our roof in the sun. Air temperature was probably around 70° but with no wind and the radiation reflecting off of the shingles I felt pretty warm up there. (Of course I can attribute much of the sweating and shaking to fear because I have a healthy fear of heights. We have a two story house, the roof is fairly steep, and my only ladder to get up there is a very rickety home made ladder that came with the house).

Anyway, I was driving to a meeting in Beaver Dam, Arizona this afternoon, and could see the long narrow cloud marking the passage of the cold front that had been making its leisurely way from the Pacific Northwest for the last week. The cold air advecting (moving) into the area was lifting the warmer air ahead of it. As this warm air was lifted, it cooled and the little bit of moisture in the air condensed out into droplets or, more likely, ice particles. The wind shifted from the south and was blowing hard from the north with the passage of the front. It was a very visible and obvious frontal passage. After the meeting ended the wind was biting and the temperature had dropped into the 40s. I-15 southbound was littered with chunks of snow and ice that had fallen from vehicles that had picked up up accumulations along the highway in Utah.

By the time I returned to Syzdekistan about 10:0 P.M. the temperature was in the 40s and the wind gusting to over thirty miles an hour. (I won’t calculate a windchill because those figures really are for exposed skin and I was smart enough to be wearing a jacket). I checked on some of our outside animals because the overnight low was supposed to be about 25°. The desert tortoises were in their burrow and I wasn’t too worried about them because they can handle surprisingly cold temperatures (I once saw a picture of a tortoise that hibernated on the Nevada Test Site in a burrow shorter than its body. The tortoise endured single digit temperatures with its butt hanging out in the breeze and up to six inches of snow perched on its posterior with no ill effects). Still, in wanting to make life more comfortable for my pets, I placed a piece of plywood over the burrow entrance.

I was a little more worried about the pen with the African spurred tortoise and the leopard tortoise. These are more tropical animals that cannot handle freezing temperatures. In previous years, they had spent the winter in the house but they are getting too large for the reptile room and one of them, ahem, soiled the carpet last year. So this year, I installed a tortoise house. Basically it is a large plastic dog house, insulated with foam insulation and headed with a heating pad on the floor. I made sure both animals were in the house and then closed the door with a piece of foam. Hopefully they will be OK.