It wasn’t easy to feel the sun this morning with 19 below zero
and a sharp northwest wind. No matter what the season, the sun’s
brilliance remains the same, but you’ll strain to sense the
warmer side of its personality on days like today. When the
thermometer scrapes bottom in my town, Lake Superior exhales
foggy breath just like people do. We call it lake steam or ice
fog. Colder air blowing over the warmer open water suddenly
drops in temperature; the water it’s carrying condenses into
millions of wispy vapors. The swirls combine into clouds that
rise into a tidal wave of steam in the distance. Raw, menacing,
ethereal – pick your adjective. We love the apparition and
consider it one of the many intangible reasons we choose to live
here. After a period of doldrums, solar activity is picking up
again with several picturesque and magnetically active sunspot
groups dotting the sun’s face. In particular, Region 1401 has a
busy, complicated mix of magnetic polarities (north and south
magnetic poles) that’s been r