Winters last gasp

With the end of February rapidly approaching, we HAD been enjoying some quite nice weather in the interior Pacific Northwest.  For most of the middle of February, day time highs had been crossing 50, and night-time lows had been staying above freezing.  We were able to bring the girls to the parks to play a few times, which is nice...they have both adapted well to enhancing their calm and not bouncing off the walls in our apartment, but...they are young girls and being able to get outside and run around and just make a bunch of noise is good for them also. 

As we roll into the weekend though, we have one last(hopefully!) bunch of cold winter air making it's way into the region.  We were forecast to get 2-4 inches of snow, but that never really materialized. Instead, just wind and dropping temperatures.  Thursday's high is expected to be somewhere in the low 20's, with 15mph winds, gusts to 25ish.  That makes for pretty brutal outside working conditions, even with the company buying folks a nice set of Carhartt outerwear every two years.  More limiting than the weather on people is the effect of the weather on our job.  Both the management of my company and our DOE oversight are fairly realistic about working outside in cold, windy conditions...the wind being more limiting.  When working with potentially contaminated radioactive material outside, wind is not necessarily your friend. 

Having spent many years growing up in Rhode Island, and many years stationed in Connecticut, I am not unfamiliar with cold...what is new to me is it being cold with no pretty white stuff to look at(and cause car accidents).  This whole cold, dry, high desert feel is new to me.  Both SWMBO and I are going through hand lotion left and right, and today(not for the first time this winter, either) I had an out of no where bloody nose.  I haven't had so many of those since I got all kinds of anemic cutting weight for wrestling back in High School. 

The good news is the cold is really only supposed to last a few days...Sunday is expected to be almost 50 again, and Monday and Tuesday are over 50...I really expect this too be the last hard freeze of the year.