“Baby, it’s cold outside!” Like really cold. Like POLAR VORTEX cold. Kongo left 80-degree San Diego weather Monday and headed out for his first 2014 trip on Monday and somewhere between Atlanta and Philadelphia he got mysteriously sucked into something called the polar vortex. Good thing Mrs. Kongo insisted he take his monkey gloves. And what the heck is a polar vortex anyway and what’s it doing down here in the lower 48?
Kongo has no idea what a polar vortex is and doubts that many other monkeys out there do either. When it showed up in all the headlines he looked it up but after reading it he decided he didn’t know much more about this weather phenomena than he did before he went scrambling for his new Christmas scarf and old winter overcoat. What the words POLAR VORTEX convey quite clearly, however, is that it’s really, really cold out there.
Polar vortex cold is the battery stopping, pipe bursting, free-falling wind chill factors kind of cold that just make you want to curl up under the covers in a fetal position. It’s that kind of cold that makes the little hairs inside your nose freeze as soon as you walk outside and then makes your monkey nose run when you come back in and thaw out. It’s the kind of cold that makes your eyes hurt. Your rental car won’t have a chance of warming up as you travel from your hotel to the office. Cars trail clouds of exhaust. People trudge about like padded automatons focused only on getting to the door one careful step (watching for ice patches) at a time.
And it’s not just the cold. The wind is howling in the vortex. The kind of howling that makes the flags stand out straight and the rigging on the poles go TING,TING,TING in a rapid fire tattoo that invades your hotel room window. The kind of wind that makes weird keening sounds as it sneaks in around the window sill. The kind of wind that makes your rental car shake like it does when a big truck blows by and you get caught in the slip stream. That kind of wind. So when you put that kind of cold and that kind of wind together, well it’s just frickin cold and awful.
So Kongo should just put his monkey lips together, press firmly, and quit whining about this. Plenty of furry simians must live, thrive, and have monkey babies in the polar vortex. Somewhere. Somewhere near the poles like maybe in Canada. Admittedly the monkey is spoiled living in San Diego and perhaps its about time he learned how the rest of the world lives. Get over it. Besides, CNN is now going on about a meteorological “one-two punch” (whatever that is) which will knock the polar vortex back to Canada later in the week! Eh? Take that polar vortex! Go back to Canada where you belong.
Evidently the polar vortex is no match for good old American hot air coming up from the Gulf. Who knew?
On Friday the monkey makes it back to the coast for a weekend of perfect San Diego weather. Sunny. No clouds. Temperatures in the 70s. Next week he goes to Florida and Washington DC but the polar vortex will be long gone by then, right? Right? Right?
Travel safe. Have fun. Stay warm.
And note to the first picture. It’s not 2010. It’s a brand new 2014! This picture is from Kongo’s rental car, a Chevrolet something and the monkey doesn’t know how to adjust the clock. It’s too cold for that.