Trask Avenue

New Jersey, along with a large portion of the eastern United States, is in the midst of a “bomb cyclone.” Bomb cyclone grabs your attention, doesn’t it? It commands a serious and dramatic response. It also sounds like a new film by Roland Emmerich or an especially potent libation at “The Bunker”, the Pentagon’s underground officer’s lounge. Naturally, real meteorologists don’t call it this. They prefer “explosive cyclogenesis.” For them explosive cyclogenesis more concisely explains what it is happening. Conveniently, it also helps justify debt incurred through years of graduate and post-graduate study.

Weather events like these are very technical, but a winning topic of conversation among attendees of the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society. Those folks have their own language and, when properly used, it can reap great benefits. At the reception following a panel discussion don’t approach that attractive climate scientist from Texas with, “Hey, that was a nice talk. By the way, didn’t I see you at the Mesoscale Processes Conference last summer?” It is a sure loser. But if you say, “When I saw you sitting up there it felt like the deep stability of a baroclinic, double diffusion frontal zone,” you’ll be swapping room numbers before the first drink is finished.

Regardless of the label, this current weather phenomenon causes extreme maritime conditions through a mysterious confluence of low atmospheric pressure, wind divergence in the upper troposphere, and a significant drop in millibars at certain latitudes. Yes, I have no idea what that means either. But bomb cyclone? I can work with that. It is easy to piece together enough vaguely precise images to understand this: a bomb cyclone qualifies as weather porn. And we all love weather porn.

127% of current Facebook statuses for people in the midst of this bomb cyclone concern the weather. Oh, how they moan and complain! Complaining about the weather is a foolish misuse of energy, energy you should conserve because wind chills are in frostbite territory. It has the same merit as bitching about which Real Housewives show is the best. Jabber all you want, but the gusts are still gusting, the snow is still snowing, the cold is still colding, and Teresa Giudice’s husband is still in jail. Grumbling about the weather is dumb, a total waste of time.

So I went to the bank, dry cleaners, and local bagel shop this morning. My fingers felt like newly formed icicles ready to snap off with one ill-placed stub. My nose turned redder than Rudolph’s. My feet felt like…well, I don’t know because I couldn’t feel them. Every time I exhaled my expelled breath immediately raced back up my nostrils. Don’t you agree it is absolutely ridiculous to have such cold weather in these modern times? If it were the 13th century, sure that would be understandable. But nowadays when we are blasting chunks of metal past Jupiter? It makes no sense. Why should we be subjected to such extremes? Something must be done and I’m the one to do it. I will write a *very* strongly worded letter to all the scientists and Al Roker. I will insist – no, demand – they fix this frigid mess immediately. I’m sure that will work. Why wouldn’t it? You know, maybe complaining isn’t as meaningless as I thought.