Camera: Apple iPhone 17 Pro
Exposure: 1/750
Aperture: f/2.2
Focal Length: 14mm equivalent
ISO: 40
We have a large storm moving across the country that looks like it is going to be substantial. Thankfully, we were able to move up my colleagues flights who are coming into the lab for the week this evening as houseguests. So I’ve been out in the dangerous cold spreading salt around the walk and driveway.
I’ve been keeping things clear, shoveling snow as it came in over the past couple of weeks, but we had a band of freezing rain come through the other day which iced up my drive and 50lbs of rock salt might not have been enough given the cold temperatures we are experiencing. Sodium chloride does not work as well below −6 to −10 °C (21 to 14 °F), and it was 0 °F this morning when I woke up. It’ll warm up a bit tomorrow to 24 °F when we are expecting a foot or more of snow, then will cool off to -3 °F and remain down in that range for at least the next week for unseasonably cold temperatures.
Also: I’ll be trying to get back in the groove of posting images and such more regularly. 2025 was an awful year, and January of 2026 has been equally difficult for national political reasons, science funding reasons on the national scale, and more including an out of control United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that is literally murdering people on the streets of America with no oversight.
Though we are getting the lab back up and running and the house seems largely settled now, it is hard to focus when our country is being torn down around us by the most corrupt American presidency and administration in history.
I am more and more reassured that we made the right decision in leaving Utah as our vote will matter here in Pennsylvania, and we can do more good from here than in Utah that institutionally has become morally bankrupt.
Update: 11:23am ET, ICE has apparently murdered another man on the street in Minneapolis. I’ve seen the video and will not link it or repost it on social media, but this was an execution.