Winter inversion

It can only be January.

A week ago, a ball of very cold air found itself trapped between the mountains, pushed down by warmer air, too weak to move up and away and out of the valley.  So the cold air, it curled into fetal position, and succumbed to death, its body spreading cold and lifeless across the valley.  And as the air began to decay, it became darker and darker, and blacker and blacker, and even colder.  And it filled up with all the filth that a city of two million people push into the air each day, people who expect the air to swirl and dance and take their filth to a better place.  But the dead air did not move, not even to shudder.  And the filth was pushed back into the city all that day.  And the day after.  And then the day after that.  And the day after that.

Warnings came.  Don't exercise outside.  Consider wearing a mask.  Don't drive if you can help it. ... But who can help it?  The city doesn't sleep, even trapped under the body of the dead air, waiting for inhuman hands to find it, lift it, rescue us!  And if it's unsafe to exercise outside, then walking or biking to work isn't an option.  More cars.  More blackness in the air.  The snow on the lower sides of the mountains becomes jaundiced with haze.  Then gray.  The schools cancel all outdoor recesses.  Mornings, the dead cold air presses heavy against the ground, foul and freezing, and we stumble through it.

The forecast is grim.  Cold and haze for five more days.  And cold and haze for five more.  Then five more, as far out in time as the National Weather Service will go.  

And then, possible snow Thursday.

Not just snow, but blowing snow.  Blowing snow Friday!  We cheer!

Thursday comes, and then Friday, and the snow and the wind dive into the valley and tear up the dead air and cast the remnants of its body down into the ground and up into the sky.  And the icy flakes scour the valley and wipe it clean and white and cold.  Deadly cold.

And the forecast tells us that the storm will end, and then there will be more still days, in which a new ball of cold air, blown in with the snow, will find itself spent and exhausted, too weak to climb out the valley walls, and it will curl itself into a ball and die, and let its body decay over the city.  And two million people will slowly suffocate again.

It must be January.