Off The Desk 10/28/26

Good morning. Sorry, my mic was falling as we were starting the show. Happy Weather Wednesday. I'm Kaylee Collins. I'm Julia O'Keefe. And I'm Chris Pizakis. Sorry, I feel like I had the cough. A little bit of difficulties this morning. I need to bubble wrap myself, I think. I know. I think I'm on the tail end of it and hopefully knock on wood, like not contagious anymore. But Chris, I'm sorry. Yeah, I feel like it's just, I don't know, I'm hoping it's just a cold. That's what it kind of seems to be. i'm able to do things but you know how you just don't feel right yeah i have like the scratchiness in your throat and stuffy nose the worst especially when speaking on camera and you just get little moments where i had a coughing fit the other day i was trying to run out of the studio and chris witnessed this i don't know why the way that i was running i kind of like flailed my arm oh yeah i hit my arm on the side of like the set got a bruise oh i like jammed my aura ring oh no dramatic i was just running out of the studio because i didn't want to interrupt i think we had just tossed to nick's live shot so i didn't want to interrupt him but um where are you going are we okay just coughing and choking but yes it's a struggle when you have a cold and you're speaking for two hours you know yeah it's the season this job is very unique in that aspect because you know if you won't if you weren't on air obviously if you're healthy enough and not contagious or anything like it's one thing to go to work still but but for us and then everyone knows and can hear it in your voice and yeah it's unique it's unique it's like you feel okay but but you just sound you're still recovering yeah now all of Western Mass knows it yeah that makes you feel better i don't know no i felt like that all this morning and even yesterday like my voice definitely sounds funny i'm like wondering do i look like bad Moms had something like, now Chris has the cold. And I'm like, I hope I wasn't the one that gave it to him. I think it's around. It's everywhere. I called it this weekend too. This past weekend, we went to that family party. And there's a lot of little kids. Oh, you did say that. And one of my aunts was like, oh, yeah. They just got over a bunch of colds. And I'm like, when you're around all these kids. And also when you're just around a lot of people this time of year, you just know. You're risking it. Yeah. Something's in there. Right. And then, yeah, it was Sunday night. I started getting this like scratchy throat i whenever i get sick i always start with a sore throat that's the first sign i feel like that's my first sign yeah and for me it's in this i mean this is everybody but the lingering cough and just like the last bit of nasal congestion that just stays around for a while because i feel i feel better yeah we're talking about being sick sorry no but good that you feel better yes we're getting there we're getting there yeah hopefully it's a cold everybody wash your hands hopefully you stay well and we're human we'll move on for sure i did have a really good voice crack this morning though on tv you did i try not to laugh it's hard when one of us has something like that happen or like i'll trip up on a word a pronunciation or something that i know is it's just funny that you two are probably like and then you have to go and read the next story and usually it's something serious yeah i just gotta do it i also chris yours came off low-key as a microphone crack though at first i was like maybe that was just his mic no that was my voice cracking uh and then this morning i mean we're always in a brain fog in general because of our shift but i was also just like not feeling good but i didn't care i called it out on tv i forgot what day it was like kaylee what day is it i'm like my mic's off you hear me it's wednesday i was like it's wednesday that's awesome it happens i think people at home kind of appreciate that yeah realness we're human yeah it happens yeah but it is wednesday and it's yeah it is a little frost out there yes there was frost out there this morning uh it's cold uh temperatures for everyone were below freezing this morning um but today we'll rebound those temperatures back into the 50s this afternoon and we'll have to get a little warmer we'll be in the mid upper 60s for Thursday and Friday so it'll feel better and yeah Halloween looks great sunny temperatures in the 60s a good amount of sun nice evening temperatures shouldn't be too bad for trick-or-treating falling into the 40s so pretty much typical for this time of year but yeah can't ask for anything better I mean it's better than trick-or-treating in the rain oh yeah or even the snow which was 15 years ago yeah the october snowstorm infamous october snowstorm anniversary yeah today yeah 15 years ago um which is crazy that is a milestone in itself but definitely a week that everyone stops to think of uh 2011 this time of year but um i mean crazy chris from the meteorological standpoint i mean a very unique event yeah super rare i mean we've never seen anything like that in recorded history and ever since um so it was it was such a wild weather event i always say to this day it's probably my favorite that i've lived through okay uh and what really solidified me want to become a meteorologist really so yeah and i have like some of my best memories like if you were even read my bio on our website i say like the october 2011 snowstorm i kind of i always liked weather yeah but i feel like that was when i really feel like i want to do this and talk about this yeah cool um and like some of like my best memories weather-wise and also i think we're just like my family-wise are from then wow that's awesome um even though it was a pretty not nice event people were out of power for a long time unfortunately there were some fatalities from that storm so like you know it was there was not good aspects to it but um i just remember being out of school for over a week we had no power part of it um for the first few days of the storm after like of the storm and after the storm we literally just all slept in my living room with a fire going that's what we did too we just played games hung out uh couldn't go anywhere we took everything from our fridge and freezer and put it out in the snow for how long it could last yeah and then uh once we started realizing that we couldn't really stay there anymore because our food was dwindling didn't have enough firewood we my aunt who lived in danbury connecticut at the time ended up getting her power back so all of us my cousins my grandparents we all went to her place we stayed there the rest of the week oh wow it's like a huge family get together that's nice though yeah that's fun so yeah i just remember the whole week just being with my family and no power or just like kind of hanging out um and i remember when it first started snowing we were playing wiffle ball my friends and i and it started snowing and we went and got our sleds went sled like sledding and it was october we're all like what you know this is crazy wow and then we went trick or treating was technically canceled that year yeah halloween was canceled but we still went out and i remember we were like jumping over trees that were still down and not safe but there was power looking back it's like oh but as a kid that there is just something kind of magical about snow especially when you have that much and you can build forts and you can just be outside sledding and doing all that so that is a good time and it's a nice memory to have that you were kind of off the grid even though at that point in time technology isn't wasn't where it is now but still to have a nice break where you just like family focus that's yeah yeah really nice yeah i always think of it as i'm thankful that i was young enough to have some magical memories associated with yeah because you know i'm sure for parents and obviously for people who sustained you know damage to their homes or injuries or anything that was a very stressful environment to be in but yeah looking back the biggest problem in my brain at the time i was supposed to go to a halloween movie night with my friend at twin hills country club that night and we were gonna go watch spooky buddies and it got canceled now what do we do and i was so sad i was like no we're not gonna go watch spooky buddies um yeah then no one was going anywhere and it was very hunkering down everyone was hunkered down and power went out same thing we slept in the living room and built pump or built snowmen with pumpkin heads and things like that that's fun yeah it was fun halloween was canceled but um my high school well well i was only in like fourth grade at the time but the high schoolers that's crazy they did a trick-or-treating around the school later on when it was safe and the power was back on and everything so i have memories associated with that and i remember my grandparents carbon monoxide detector wouldn't stop going off oh no they end up coming in and staying with us for the whole time but i thought it was awesome it was like sleep over with your grandparents everyone's so fun yeah it was i'm thankful for the adults in my life who made it a magical and not scary experience yes yeah mostly it was it was kind of similar for our family too except there's like a funny part to this story and a a very serious part of the story. So funny, classic New England. My sister was working at Dunkin' Donuts at the time and it was still open. This wasn't when the storm first happened, but when they got power back on, you bet they were open and my sister was working. So my mom had driven her to work and was going to go pick her up. And me and my younger sister went along for the ride. My sister was bringing home a bunch of donuts. It was like, you were hanging out there was no school whatever gonna hang out inside and my mom went to just quickly as we were all walking inside just kind of clear a little bit more of the path leading into our house and an old tree in our yard and my family home fell thank god it hit part of the house first and then but it did hit my mom or my god fell on her however you want to describe it she was okay I will preface it by saying and she's fully recovered totally fine now but in the moment it was really scary i think i was like a freshman in in high school or maybe a sophomore i don't really remember but um and my younger sister was little she was probably yeah about your age and um she had just walked inside and closed the door so it would have been way worse if she had still been outside um so that was scary and obviously hard and it was hard for where my parents house is located it's at the end of a hill and obviously it was really snowy and steep and for um first responders to get there from the direction they were coming was like a whole uh struggle and then the response of like there's snow everywhere so that was like a scary moment again she was she was okay treated at the hospital was on medication for a bit fully recovered so that was good but i always i always think about that it was yeah i will never forget the 2011 um october snowstorm because that's when that happened just like yeah it was because she's picking up my sister from work and we were just she was just having another shift at Dunkin like it was right normal but but for the rest of the time when we were home and there was no power you know my my dad was there helping my mom my other siblings were helping and we still were able to like enjoy parts of being home just hanging out with each other so yeah but yeah that's 15 years it's crazy that is great and uh i i i don't know if we'll ever see anything like that again uh it's just so rare for that to happen it'll snow in october again we've seen october but not like that but to get a foot plus of snow in october like that big of a snowstorm is you need like the absolute most perfect setup which is slim to none like i i don't know if we'll ever see it again in our lifetime yeah it's crazy has there been um in recent times a massive snowstorm similar to that in in like april like a later spring yeah yeah there's been um i don't really remember there's been some big april snowstorms before yeah that's also kind of rare too if it's that much snow yeah um yeah there's been some big april snowstorms uh actually one of ours on the list here is um i think we got like nine inches or something like that in april oh wow at one point that's a lot back in the early 2000s so like we yeah we've seen snowstorms in april um we've even had immeasurable snow into may not like snowstorms but i remember that's so crazy it was 2019 it was 2019 uh we got like a little over an inch of snow in may yeah early may another thing about the storm that i feel like people were saying made it even more dangerous not only the wind obviously but the fact that all the leaves were still on the tree yeah and it was so heavy and that's why all the trees were falling so i mean i guess if you're looking at it even with a storm in april there's the leaves will just be starting to come that is true but right now we're looking outside now the leaves are also on the trees so that's really what i feel like did a lot of the it's like heavy yeah if that storm happened in december january february it would have just been a typical big snowstorm that you probably would have forgot about right yeah you know we see those quite often they're a foot of snow during the winter yeah yeah but um yeah it was because there were so many leaves and the trees still uh that brought down so many power lines and everything too and i also don't think people believed it as much like probably yeah because oh it's october it'll probably snow i don't even think meteorologists to a degree even believed exactly what they were seeing like i think a lot of people underestimated the snowfall totals and it just became a disaster i mean that's what it was i remember my dad and i went out to go try to shake off some of the trees some of the snow off and the whole sky completely lit up blue because a big transformer blew like not too far away but i'll never forget how blue the sky turned like it was so bright but i'll never forget that yeah it's crazy 15 years ago 15 years i'm sure everybody watching has the memory of that oh yeah that time that storm can remember what they were doing and how it affected them you know how like our grandparents always have the stories for us that's one of the stories we'll have yeah yeah the great october 2011 snowstorm i never said yeah um yeah wild stuff well a good a good topic for for weather wednesday for sure for sure um rumor has it Adam Strzempka will be working on something about it uh for the evening news so check that out for sure all right we'll be right back all right welcome back to off the desk on this weather wednesday we talked a lot of weather um obviously you know the october snowstorm brings up memories of halloween because it happened you know this halloweek um halloween halloweek the weather on halloween though looks very different from 15 years ago so thankfully take that um a nice sunny day i mean no one's gonna have to change up their costume yeah that looks really nice yeah maybe take if you're gonna need to take off layers that's what i was saying at the end of the newscast this morning i'm like wow i probably could have gone with the original plan i had for my daughter's halloween costume but um still good to maybe do a costume with layers yeah you know that's for sure it's still chilly in the evenings yeah yeah it'll be good it will yes it'll be great well besides halloween obviously we have to get through that first but thanksgiving is less than a month away it's the 26th right november 26 yeah i just learned 28 days away 29 days away yeah so we're already talking about thanksgiving i love thanksgiving and it's a great topic of conversation because there's so much to talk about well thanksgiving yeah yeah it's great um anyway i saw this article that gives some data statistics about what people prefer on thanksgiving and the headline is it's officially time to pardon the poultry uh people people prefer the sides to the thanksgiving turkey this is saying 65 percent of gen z and 56 percent of millennials agreed they would be perfectly happy eating a side only thanksgiving meal that's wild yeah i mean i do love the sides but the to me the turkeys yeah the staple of thanksgiving yeah it makes a thanksgiving dinner yeah yeah the turkey is what i think makes the thanksgiving dinner but i do agree i love the sides yeah i i probably eat the least turkey out of everything else really yeah i i eat the turkey but it would just just a little bit and then a little on the sides i guess that is true because you the sides you don't really have all those sides very often other points of the year i mean with the exception of probably mashed potatoes if you're making meals with potatoes i only eat stuffing at thanksgiving yeah stuffing and i love my grandma's recipe that's been passed down so good but yeah mashed potatoes a win all the time so good um stuffing yeah stuffing cranberry sauce sweet potatoes or yams yep green bean casserole i've started to make that in recent years what else it's usually some type of roll yes they roll yeah do you guys do your families have a a dish or something that's kind of you know signature to you like you might not see it at other people's thanksgiving i think we do i don't think so um we went through i remember like we don't do this really now but there were times where we had some appetizers before the meal when we had like dinner a little bit later because my family does dinner pretty early usually around 1 p.m um and i remember we had all these different assortments of pickles oh which was kind of different okay um we did that for a few years and then maybe like cheese and crackers and that kind of thing but that i think because you just there's so much food the meal you don't really need an appetizer um but yeah that would be the only thing that sticks out was we had this assortment of pickles okay okay maddie's family does turkey but they also cook a ham okay a little bit of both so there's a ham and turkey because some people on our side i guess eat ham rather than turkey so i'm feeling we're forgetting other sides does your family do turnips no we do turnips like mashed which i guess my dad really likes that so my aunt makes a really good apple sauce apple sauce that's a good one yeah my dad's side makes mac and cheese oh mac and cheese is a good one too like a homemade mac and cheese to go along with everything love mac and cheese and there's always a salad but on thanksgiving i kind of feel bad for the salad because nobody wants the salad nobody it's just it takes up so much room on the plate and i would much rather have just like the roasted veggies that you get at thanksgiving like my mom does brussels sprouts and there's carrots and of course the potatoes and there's no room for the salad god i want thanksgiving meal right now yeah right well we're close um lots of gravy gravy of course another point that this study made was that 80 percent of americans admit they'd rather cook the thanksgiving sides than the turkey which well yeah that's the worst part to cook i actually want to learn i said to my parents this year i want to i think last year i observed but i want to actually have my mom show me how to cook the thanksgiving turkey because i have never cooked it myself that's something i want to be able to do for my family like years down the line you know and um i think my sister-in-law and my older sister both know how to make the stuffing i don't know how to make the stuffing like the way that my grandma makes it so i need to learn that too but um yeah it's a it's a big task i mean we all know i can just picture my mom every single year getting up super early to start and the turkey is like a labor of love to cook that oh yeah it takes a long time it takes a long time my grandmother did it hosted for years and then she passed the torch to my aunt and uncle recently but she gave them her notepads of how to make everything do it yeah because we wanted it to to be all the same as when my grandma did it and so my aunt was really good and my mom helped and stuff too but seeing the notepad i was like gram this is this is intense this is intense it's always great when you think of thanksgiving dessert what do you think of pie like pumpkin pie apple pie yeah i'm pumpkin and apple pie chocolate cream pie with some vanilla ice cream some whipped cream cheesecake cheesecake really yeah we have a cheesecake cheesecake try to think of what else maybe like i think that's pretty much it's pie my family also drinks apple cider, I was thinking I'm like, do we do apple cider on Thanksgiving have like dinner, they have like these big pitchers of apple cider on the table, that's kind of nice, yeah that's cool, festive, so good yeah so good, but yeah less than a month away, I mean crazy, now come up before we know it this isn't related to food but it's typically a popular activity and there people are so divided about it on Thanksgiving, are you guys or people in your family marathon or 5k runners on Thanksgiving Day or are you just hanging out at home until you wait for the meal we are home, we watch the well we watch the parade then we watch football, yeah I think I agree that's the way to do it, but there are some families that that's a tradition, they go when they do the turkey trot, yeah which I'm surprised my family's not, but I think it's because because my mom's huge runner, like she runs miles every day, but we never were a turkey trot family, I think because on Thanksgiving it's a reason to sleep in, yeah exactly, it's the parade so we take that as a as a break, I mean I get the the logic there it's like yeah go and burn off the calories before you eat them, sure, but it's also like it is nice on Thanksgiving morning to have a slow morning if you don't have to work, you know you're just one with your family, yeah yeah so lots to look forward to there for sure, yeah how much time we have um minutes yeah i would say maybe take a break because if we come back we only have like two minutes left okay if we need to take a break that's fine okay yeah all right we'll be right back all right and we're back for these last couple of minutes of off the desk on this weather Wednesday now chris you left us hanging there before the break you had a question you had to ask us yeah i think julia and nick and i talked about this a while ago but it's i saw it again the other day because people were talking about it on social media when do you clarify that it's the holiday season like some people say that it starts in october because of halloween people start actually decorating for halloween and then that's when people start decorating their houses for because then there's thanksgiving and then there's christmas and like you start to see like the stores decorated for certain like halloween and things like so and then some people are like it's not until like thanksgiving or after thanksgiving like when do you think that is a tough one i think a lot of people and where our society is at right now it starts like november 1st you'll start seeing people decorating for christmas and stuff even before thanksgiving on november 1st i personally don't really feel like i start celebrating until like on thanksgiving like that feels like the start of the holiday the true holiday season for me because that's when you start doing and this is different for everybody but that's when you start doing probably your Christmas shopping like on Black Friday and over the next couple of weeks leading up to Christmas that's when i feel like it's appropriate to listen to Christmas music and i get my Christmas tree usually right after Thanksgiving so to me the true holiday season feels like on Thanksgiving and after through Christmas you don't consider Halloween part the holiday season i don't i don't know why okay that i think that was our big thing was like yeah is is Halloween the start of the holiday season feel correct thanksgiving and christmas feel more in line yeah i don't know i was thinking more of like family gatherings to associate the holidays with warmth and family and togetherness and not that you don't have that necessarily on Halloween but Halloween for me anyways it's dressing up with your friends or it's different yeah like the sit down meal with your family you get around the holidays okay but even now i'm thinking like would you do you extend the holiday season past Christmas yes like into New Year's yes i would okay because New Year's like it's the same thing it's not usually it changes at a point where it's not all like i'm with my family sometimes it's been more right with my friends but also in like religious sense like the holiday season does go past Christmas um until January 6th, I think. 3rd? 6th? Don't quote us on that. So yeah, it's different. It's interesting to hear everyone's takes on that. Yeah, it was very torn. A lot of people think that Halloween starts the holiday season because they celebrate and they decorate and like they, I don't know. For me, I think it's November 1st is the start of the holiday season. Which is coming up and I don't think, I don't know if I would continue New Year's for me. To be continued. We can have this discussion as we head into the holiday season. Sure. All right. See you guys all tomorrow. Bye.