Waiting all Winter

The mercury hit 70 three weeks ago, didn't it? Overnight tonight forecasters are calling for single digit temperatures, tomorrow they'll barely break into the double digits. Wind chill temps will make it seem like the temps are actually below freezing.

These bitter cold temperatures will combine with sustained northwest winds of 15 to 20 mph to produce below zero wind chills. Wind chills will drop to between 5 and 15 below zero late tonight... and remain below zero on Friday.

All the winter buzz words will be tossed around: frostbite, hypothermia, bitterly cold, exposed skin, and layers (suggested!). It's not a storm team event, temperatures this low are rarely combined with snowfall, but it'll certainly dominate newscasts. The Mayor has issued the standard warning to citizens of Boston. It hasn't come out yet this year, but we're still a few weeks from Groundhog's Day so there's no way of knowing how long winter weather will be with us this year.

"We are particularly concerned about homeless individuals who may seek shelter in out of the way or isolated locations," Mayor Menino said. "My Emergency Shelter Commission is working with outreach providers, the Boston Police and Boston EMS to identify these locations and intensify our efforts to offer people shelter and safety. I ask all citizens who are aware of vulnerable individuals to be eyes and ears for us and to contact my 24-Hour Constituent Services line at 617-635-4500." If you encounter an individual that is having a medical emergency please call 911.

Don your hat and gloves before heading out tomorrow – oh, check on your elderly family and neighbors, and feel free to leave your morning bus fare at home. It's likely that the fare boxes will be frozen solid when the bus pulls up for your morning commute. Open air stations, especially those on the Forrest Hills end of the Orange Line and Lechmere on the Green Line might put the fare vending machines to the test as well. But be nice to the poor T Ambassadors if you're trying to store value on a CharlieTicket or CharlieCard, they're only doing their job and when the machines are wonky there's likely little they can do to fix the problem without support from central admin.

Sure this might have been more appropriate, but this totally irrelevant image of Taiwanese beach and T Tokens is from Flickr user jhull came up in a search for "boston" and "cold."