Current mood:	weather-glum
Current music:	simon & garfunkel--sounds of silence
Entry tags:	brother, idaho, inversion, seattle, thanksgiving, weather

inversion aversion

so because we are in a valley (the 'treasure valley,' to be exact) we are experiencing something called an inversion. to my admittedly rudimentary understanding, this is some meteorological phenomenon in which the air gets trapped under a layer of clouds between the mountains & can't get out or circulate. so everything in the atmosphere that is bad for you (pollution, exhaust, ashes, nasty particulate matter, etc) is trapped down here where i have to breathe it and walk through it. it's very stinky & the air is really irritating my eyes, nose & throat. plus, it is producing the thickest fog i have ever experienced; it's hard to even see more than 20 feet in front of you in the mornings & after dark. i can't even see across the courtyard to the buildings on the other side right now. and at night, when it dips below zero, the fog freezes, so you wake up in the morning & walk through ice-clouds. so very bizarre.

anyway, they tell me this happens, 3 or 4 times a winter here. lovely. i can't wait for this one to end. i was really looking forward to getting out of it for a couple days (i'm going to seattle for thxgvg tomorrow) but my brother says they are having a similar thing there too. terrific...