The midwestern United States is currently gripped in the icy hands of something called The Polar Vortex. I’m not going to try and explain what that is, but the bottom line is that we are likely to set a record in Chicago for the coldest day in our weather history at somewhere near -27 Fahrenheit.

To give you some idea of how unpleasant things are, the HIGH temperature on Wednesday January 30, 2019 was -15 Fahrenheit. Schools were closed all across the metropolitan area today and will continue to stay closed on Thursday and possibly on into friday. The US Postal Service has suspended mail delivery for two days due to the bitter cold – good idea because working outside all day is brutal.

That does mean that I won’t be able to mail any of my Fife & Drum Miniatures orders for several days

Back to the frigid cold story; downtown Chicago looked like a ghost town as there were very few vehicles on the streets and even fewer pedestrians. I did not venture out of my burrow at all today, choosing to remain in the lower Man Cave where things were toasty warm. That gave me a good excuse to pick up some paint brushes and work on painting more samples of the new Minden SYW figures. I will post pictures of my progress tomorrow (thursday, as of this writing), but 12 of the 16 new figures have been painted. 

Tomorrow looks to be more of the same, with the forecast low of -24 Fahrenheit at 7 A.M and then gradually rising throughout the day to a balmy +2 Fahrenheit by the afternoon. Friday will see the highs back into the 20s and we will see a couple inches of snow, but at this point in the Winter, who cares about 4 more inches of snow? Then things really get crazy over the weekend as the forecast calls for temperatures in the mid to upper 40s on Sunday.

We will endure though. Embrace the Winter!