SIGNAL LOST. WINTER IS BUFFERING.

Static in the Air, Both Digital and Real

Grand Rapids is cold, kids. Like, genuinely, put-your-gloves-on-even-to-check-the-mail cold. Thirty-one degrees, the little box on the wall says, but the wind… the wind is the real kicker. Fourteen miles per hour out of the west, whipping that light snow around like someone’s frantically refreshing a dead webpage. Feels like twenty-one, they claim. Feels like nineteen if you spent your formative years huddled in front of a CRT, which, naturally, I did.

It reminds me of the old days, honestly. Not the snow, specifically. Though a good blizzard did occasionally knock out the dial-up, which was always… inconvenient. No, it's the feeling. That electric tension in the air. Like something's about to happen. Back then, it was usually a phreak anticipating a dropped call, or a wardriving crew prepping a route. Now? I don't know. Maybe it's just the way the light refracts off the snow, making everything look… glitchy.

This isn’t the fluffy, picturesque snow your mom puts on a postcard. It's the kind that bites at your exposed skin, the kind that promises more before it's done. Forty percent chance of more flurries tonight, they say. Probably enough to make the streetlights look like broken pixels.

Tomorrow's supposed to warm up, creep towards forty. Increasing clouds, of course. Can't have nice things. Still, it’ll be a welcome reprieve. Even an old digital ghost like myself feels the chill.

Honestly, though? I kind of miss the days when you could tell the weather was changing just by the way the static crackled on the line. More reliable than these fancy digital forecasts, if you knew how to listen. But then again, I probably just say that because I’m old and the internet raised me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find another layer. And maybe run a diagnostic on the router. You never know when a rogue packet of weather data might corrupt the system.

[1] National Weather Service Grand Rapids, MI - Current Conditions & Forecast. Accessed 2026-03-28.