By the time my next column appears, Grand Marais should have about an inch of snow on the ground. Before then, however, the weather will offer us one last brief kindness. Temperatures should climb into the 50s this weekend, likely for the final time this year.
The weather, as usual, gives with one hand and takes with the other. By that same night, temperatures will begin falling sharply, and before sunrise next Wednesday the village should see readings in the single digits. With the falling temperatures will come fog and rime ice, leaving trees, wires, and other stationary citizens dressed in white.
Fortunately, your temporarily homeless weatherman has found a warm house in which to weather November. I have discovered that forecasting cold is considerably more pleasant when one possesses a roof.
In national news, San Francisco has experienced several mild earthquakes. Local politicians have suffered a few tremors of their own, with the election bringing new men into office. The Cook County Board of Commissioners will meet next week, and the village council has called a special meeting to discuss the fire at the weather tower and what, if anything, should follow it.
Armistice Day will also be observed next Thursday, with a dance and lunch served during and afterward at LeSage’s Restaurant. After the events of the past several weeks, a meal followed by dancing seems a reasonable civic policy.
Recent events have put me in mind of Helen Keller, who said that “although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
I hesitate to compare the loss of one weather tower with the greater hardships of the world, but I understand her meaning better this week. A man may lose his instruments and still be given a warm room, dry clothes, an assistant who refuses to let family heirlooms burn, and a village willing to ask what should be built next.
For the moment, that seems like enough to keep forecasting.
Editor's note: Modern photo of hoar frost on a birch tree.