If you scroll down this page a bit, you’ll see a whimsical post about Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada. Timely given a rare snow in Las Vegas just a few days ago.
I moved to Colorado this summer after living in a tropical climate for 22 years. Yes, you read that right. Twenty-two years. And I am never going back to the tropics. I have sweated my last day in humid 92-degree weather. Give me snow, and snow and more snow. I guess I would never have made it as a Nephite or a Lamanite.
Today a quick storm came through my small town in Colorado and dumped an inch of snow in about a half-hour. I was worried because the snow from five days ago was starting to melt slightly. I say slightly because it was 18 below (F) at my house Monday morning, and it got up to a balmy 5 below at midday before getting back below 10 degress below again overnight Tuesday. Since then, it’s been quite warm: 10 degrees F at night and 25 F during the day.
I got on the phone with some of my colleagues from Latin America and told them it got down to minus 28 degrees C recently, and they gasped and were literally speechless. After about 10 seconds, they said, “you moved from Miami for THAT!” And I laughed and told them I was loving it.
Today we had snow that looked like cat litter. A few days ago we had snow with small, pretty flakes. It’s all good — it’s white and covers everything in our yard. My horse shivered when it got to 18 below but she has grown a nice winter coat and seems fine now as long as I feed her regularly. Our dog loves the snow and runs around in it for hours.
There must be something in the air, but right now I’m into change. In early August, it was above 90 degrees (but NOT HUMID) in my town for about two weeks in a row. And now in December it’s regularly below freezing. I just spent a half-hour shoveling the walk and chopping at the ice.
I’m sorry for all you hot weather lovers, but Christmas in the tropics is just wrong. Santa in a red suit when it’s 95 degrees and humid? Give me a break. It’s even worse in the southern hemisphere, where I lived for five of the last 22 years. Longer and hotter days during Christmas? Christmas lights on the palm trees? That’s just wrong, wrong, wrong.
So, among the many things I am thankful for this Christmas season, I would like to state that I am thankful for snow. I am thankful for crisp days when you can see your breath. I am thankful for being able to wear sweaters and heavy coats. I am thankful for seeing the white hills march away like white elephants (thank you, Ernest Hemingway) to the Rockies. Bless us all, every one.
You mock my Arizona Christmas? 🙂 You have to see the lights around the Mesa Arizona Temple grounds before you mock palm tress with lights. 🙂
Btw- I have yet to wear a coat or jacket this year.
Geoff, which costs more, annual heating costs in your Colorado home, or the annual cooling costs you had in your Florida home?
I looked you up on the online yellow pages, mapped it, and did a bird’s eye view. Nice homestead you got there. And beautiful country. I took the scenic route from Ft. Collins to Longmont back in 2005, and loved the drive.
How did I miss that you had moved to Colorado? I spent eight years of my childhood living at the Air Force Academy. I loved the blizzards.
Bookslinger, I spent an average of $400/month on electricity in Miami. I haven’t gotten a bill for December yet, but I think it will be in the range of $250 for electricity and gas put together (two separate bills). If you average it out, I think I’ll be spending about $200/month in CO, half of what I spent in Miami.
People need to realize that the A/C needs to be on 9-10 months a year in Miami, and sometimes I needed to crank it up even around Christmas.
Brian, I’m inclined to think the Mesa temple has done about as good a job as you can do with palm trees for Christmas. But they simply don’t look right when it’s 95 degrees out in South America.
Geoff: $400/month average, $4800/year in electricity in Miami? Wowza.
If your annual average works out to $200/month, or $2400/year, for both gas and electric in Colorado, then you have a very efficient house too.
Is your barn heated ?
The barn is kind of heated with those little electric panels on the floor. Need to keep those panels far, far away from the hay. House is incredibly efficient — any sunlight at all (even if it’s 18 below and sunny) and we can turn off the heat during the day, and the heat stays in the house until about midnight. It’s really quite extraordinary.
“I’m sorry for all you hot weather lovers, but Christmas in the tropics is just wrong.”
Why not just say, “I don’t like Christmas in the tropics”? Why the insistence on declaring it to be “wrong”?
“Give me snow, and snow and more snow. I guess I never would have made it as a Nephite or a Lamanite.”
The last time I checked, the Hill Cumorah was located in upper New York state. Not exactly the tropics. Geoff, maybe you could have made it as a Nephite or Lamanite after all.
Naismith, because I believe in moral absolutes.
Custer, I am a Mesoamerican theory absolutist as well.
Custer, the way I read the Book of Mormon, the _large_ plates of Nephi are hidden in Cumorah, where the last battle was. Those were hidden before Moroni took the plates of Mormon, the abridgement plates.
As you can read in Mormon 6:6, the records that were hidden in the hill Cumorah, were everything EXCEPT the plates of Mormon, which were given to Moroni. The plates of Mormon became the Book of Mormon. So it wasn’t the Book of Mormon that was hid in Cumorah, it was the 1000 years of the large plates of Nephi.
Now Moroni doesn’t say where he was going to hide the plates of Mormon (Book of Mormon). Therefore the hill in New York, which LDS often call Cumorah, is likely not really the Cumorah of Mormon 6:6.
So it may be a false tradition for the Latter-day Saints call that hill in New York “Cumorah.”
Or maybe it is. Who really knows? But it will be cool to find out some day.
Bookslinger, I agree with you. Who really knows? The Church has never taken an official position concerning the location of Book of Mormon lands. I don’t claim a “sure knowledge” on the subject, but I do lean toward those lands being located in the state of New York region. I believe this for many reasons, but I doubt Geoff’s intent of this post was a detailed discussion of Book of Mormon geography, so I will resist the temptation.
Suffice it to say that many General Authorities through the years have supported the idea that the Hill Cumorah area in New York is the location of the final battles and in this hill the plates were buried that Joseph Smith uncovered, and that it is the same Hill Cumorah mentioned in the Book of Mormon.