WinFly Weather

So far, we've had a surprisingly mild WinFly. WinFly stands for Winter Fly-In; it's one of hundreds of abbreviations we have here that came from the Navy.  It's the period of time after winter and before Mainbody when the bulk of the summer population arrives.

WinFly goes from mid-August to early October and the population is about 460 - 29.6% of whom are women.  The population is made up of remaining winterovers who will leave in October and about 300 new folks, who are remarkably tan, with-it and perky in comparison.

I expected the winterovers to be resentful of us, crusty and grumpy, but I've only heard a few grumbles about the increased population, the onslaught of cold viruses and the fact that we are eating THEIR salad and fruit.  The more sane winterovers told us that it was a mild, snowy, blowy winter that was made more pleasant by the giant shipment of freshies that came mid-winter with a medevac flight - but certainly, even these folks are ready to go after seeing only white and feeling only cold for nearly 9 months.

WinFly is known for its super-cold temperatures, storms and nacreous clouds.  We hadn't seen much of the cold temperatures.  Temps had been hovering around 0F/-18C with wind chills getting down to -15F/-26C or so.  That all changed yesterday.  Here are today and tonight's forecasts:

   

We've seen some nice, but mild displays of nacreous clouds, but nothing like these. Photos were taken by a winterover.

The nacreous clouds pictured here might be the Type II Polar Stratospheric Clouds, which require temperatures of -125F/-85C. They are more vibrant than the ones we've seen recently, which might have been Type I, which show up in warmer temperatures and have to do with a reduction in the ozone layer, Check out this website: http://www.atoptics.co.uk/highsky/psc1.htm for more photos and descriptions.