Arctic air brings extreme cold temps, subzero wind chill to region

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Dry air from the barren reaches of the north will be here for just about 24 hours, but will certainly make an impression for those of us that need to be outside for any extended amount of time.

You may think of air as all the same, but Arctic air is heavy and dense and oozes in from the north like cold molasses, covering the lowest layer of the atmosphere with tightly packed molecules, void of much moisture and putting everything it touches into a deep freeze.

Tuesday air is coming right of the furthest reaches of the north. (Courtesy NOAA)

The high temperature for today was reached several hours ago at midnight, and it’s been falling ever since. You can expect daytime highs between 8 or 9 degrees north and west of Boston, around 10 to 12 in the city and approaching 20 as you get to the south coast.

This is definitely one of the colder days we can experience in southern New England and at the end of the winter, it could even be our coldest. However, the record low for today is -4. We won’t come close.

When you factor in the wind, though, it will feel below 0 this morning — perhaps even 15 below at times in the Worcester Hills. This is cold enough for the National Weather Service to have issued a wind chill advisory for those areas.

Wind chill readings around 9 a.m. Tuesday are expected to be at their coldest of the day. (Courtesy WeatherBELL)

With light winds and clear skies overnight Tuesday, temperatures will fall again to the single digits. But by morning, milder air will already be streaming northward and after sunrise, temperatures will rebound back toward and eventually above the freezing mark. This will feel like a completely different air mass than the day before.

Morning lows on Wednesday will be in the single numbers in Greater Boston. (Courtesy NOAA)

It remains dry and seasonably cold for the end of the week; although Saturday sees a reinforcing shot of below-average temperatures.

We will have to watch for potential storms over the weekend. The atmosphere is going to be in a state of flux, and whether or not we could see a snowstorm remains in question.

At the Movies: New ‘Scream’ film coming to theaters

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FAIRFIELD — The films of 2022 keep rolling out.

Arriving on screens this week are:

“Breeder,” which concerns women being abducted for bio-hacking experiments. One of the women, Mia, begins to work out the truth. The film is not rated.

“Dawn Raid” is the story of two Manukau Polytechnic students who turned a bootleg T-shirt business and hip-hop night at a local bar in Otara into the influential Dawn Raid Entertainment empire.

Unpaid tax debts, rifts between artists and a feeling of betrayal and failure underpinned the downfall of Dawn Raid Entertainment, though not before they had created an immeasurable musical legacy that would pave the way for future New Zealand artists to reach international audiences.

The film is not rated.

“Old Strangers” is the tale of three friends hoping to rekindle the spark of their youth only to be confronted with the harsh realities of their relationships. Just beyond their reunion, in the deep woods, there is something otherworldly growing and feeding on their pain. The film is not rated.

All three arrive on screens Tuesday.

The weekend offerings are varied.

“A Cops and Robbers Story” is a documentary set in the 1980s. It centers on Corey Pegues, who was embroiled in a life of crime as a member of New York City’s infamous Supreme Team gang. After a near-death gang confrontation, he flees the city, only to return years later as a rising star in the NYPD. The film is not rated.

“Arctic Void” is the story of three men who are the only ones remaining after other passengers disappear on a tourist ship in the Arctic. Forced ashore and alone in the elements, the men deteriorate in body and mind with the clock now ticking on their survival. A dark truth emerges that forces them to ally or perish. It’s not rated.

“Belle” is an animated movie about a shy, everyday high school student living in a rural village. For years, she has only been a shadow of herself. When she enters a massive virtual world, she escapes into her online persona as Belle, a gorgeous and globally beloved singer. One day, her concert is interrupted by a monstrous creature chased by vigilantes. The film is rated PG.

“Borrego” features Lucy Hale in the story of a young botanist on a research mission gone awry. After witnessing a drug mule’s plane crash in the Borrego desert, she is kidnapped and forced on a dangerous journey to a remote drop-off point. With limited essentials and alone in the desert with her captor, desperation for survival takes hold. The film is rated R.

“Delicious” is set in 1789 France when the prestige of a noble house depends above all on the quality of its table. When talented cooker Pierre Manceron is dismissed by the Duke of Chamfort, he loses the taste of cooking. Back in his country house, he and a mysterious friend feed a desire for revenge against the duke and decide to create the very first restaurant in France. The film is not rated.

“Hotel Transylvania: Tranformaania” reunites the monsters for an all-new adventure that presents Drac with his most terrifying task yet. The film is rated PG.

“Italian Studies” centers on a writer who loses her memory and finds herself adrift in New York City – with almost no sense of time, place, the season – or her own identity. She finds an anchor in a charismatic teenager, connecting with him and his free-spirited group of friends. The film is not rated.

“Riverdance: The Animated Adventure” is about an Irish boy and a Spanish girl who journey into the mythical world of the Megaloceros Giganteus, who teach them to appreciate Riverdance as a celebration of life. The film is not rated.

“Scream” is set 25 years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro. A new killer has donned the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town’s deadly past. The film is rated R.

“Shattered” centers on a lonely tech millionaire who encounters a charming, sexy woman. When he’s injured, she quickly steps in as his nurse. But her odd behavior makes him suspect that she has more sinister intentions. The film is rated R.

“The Free Fall” centers on a woman, who after attempting suicide, must wrestle with an overbearing husband. The film is not rated.

For information on Edwards Cinemas in Fairfield, visit www.regmovies.com/theatres/regal-edwards-fairfield-imax. For Vacaville showtimes, visit www.brendentheatres.com. For Vallejo showtimes, check www.cinemark.com/theatres/ca-vallejo.

Screaming their heads off, moms let it all out at Charlestown High

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Moms are fed up. Not tired, not overwhelmed, not upset — but fed up. Done. Crispier than a slice of burned toast.

Kids are sent home from school or daycare because of COVID cases. Work/life “balance” becomes impossible when you’re trying to listen in on a Zoom call while your toddler is crying or the baby needs a diaper change. And with the stress and worry that comes with having kids who aren’t old enough to be vaccinated, it’s no wonder some moms just want to scream their heads off.

On Thursday night, that’s exactly what they did.

Led by Sarah Harmon of Charlestown, a therapist who runs the health and wellness site The School of MOM, about 20 women gathered on the track at Charlestown High School to sound their barbaric yawp.

“This is exactly what I need,” said Ashley Jones, who lives in Charlestown and has a 3-year-old son.

“It’s a safe place to be to with other people feeling the same thing with having a kid who can’t be vaccinated,” she said.

This is the second time Harmon has led a group screaming — the first time was in March 2021.

“It was an Arctic night but people came out anyway and we just screamed at the top of our lungs and then we hugged and went on our merry way and it was quite healing,” said Harmon.

“I’m hearing my moms and my clients talk about their struggles… it’s culminating in just this intense rage, and they have nowhere to put it.”

Being a mom — especially a new mom — can be difficult even in normal times, and the importance of having a community makes it even harder now, said Harmon, since gathering in person isn’t always safe.

Sarah Harmon addresses a group of about 20 moms, talking about the difficulties of parenting during the pandemic. (Meghan B. Kelly/WBUR)

As she addressed the group, Harmon said a lot of moms are feeling rage, and also “all of these emotions that we have been feeling so acutely for almost two years.” The other women called out what they’re feeling, too: sadness, resentment, isolation, loneliness, anxiety and loss of spontaneity.

After grabbing some light up props, Harmon guided the group to the middle of the field, where they stood in a circle. She had everyone take a deep breath and then just let it out — first just screams and then any curse words that came to mind.

The last round of screaming was a mini “contest” to see who could keep screaming the longest, the honor of which went to Jessica Buckley, who also lives in Charlestown.

For Buckley, screaming felt cathartic. “I felt like it was less into the void and more [together] as a community,” she said.

Having two children who aren’t old enough to be vaccinated themselves has been frustrating, she said.

“I feel like we’ve just felt very forgotten in all of this, with our kids not being able to even be vaccinated… it’s so frustrating and we don’t have any end in sight” as the timeline for the vaccine keeps getting pushed back.

After the women screamed into the night, they gathered for a group photo, and then hugged and laughed with each other before heading home. For a brief moment, it gave them all what maybe a lot of us need right now: community.

Polestar 2 single-motor review: a performance marque reinvented?

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I came to Volvos later in life when I purchased a red C30 T5 six speed manual. Depending on who tells that tale I was either harking back to the days of hot hatches or having a mid-life crisis.

Either way, it was the best car I ever owned that didn’t have a battery. Unbelievable grunt from the five-cylinder transverse engine, probably the best ICE Volvo ever made, but I’m biased. I liked that car so much I paid a silly amount of money to get the Polestar chip upgrade. As my daughter said at the time, “You paid how much to get a blue scrabble tile stuck on the back?”

Which brings us to today. The Polestar high performance racing brand has been spun off into its own company jointly owned by Volvo and Geely (who also own Volvo) with a mandate as a pure EV marque.

Their first pure EV, Polestar 2, is available now in Australia. It’s marketed directly to the public with test drives organised through a series of “events”, initially in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

This is one of the “direct to public” models sidestepping dealer networks that Tesla pioneered and is being tentatively adopted throughout the industry, albeit with some resistance from the incumbents.

Given my favourable predisposition to Polestar and the fact that I run a website that aspires to be an EV agnostic direct to public sales channel, I booked a test drive at Pacific Fair on the Gold Coast with a view to seeing how the car was and how their direct model was delivered.

I must say my first impressions were a bit underwhelming. Way too much communication that ended up feeling overly intrusive. But that all changed when I got to site and was introduced to Mel, my demonstrator; competence and professionalism personified.

My ride was the FWD long-range version in “Thunder”, a sultry grey that didn’t live up to its name, but was relatively inoffensive.

Mel gave me a detailed briefing inside and out, which was very useful and she made sure that I paired my phone with the car so that they could give me a call out on the road.

Predictably, this was the most difficult thing to achieve. She then put a route into the navigation (local golf course), said when you want to come back just say “Hey Google, take me home” and told me to be back in 45 minutes.

The Polestar 2 is a fastback that is a bit like a hatch on steroids. It’s built on Volvo/Geely’s CMA platform and has over-the-air updates. Very spacious on the inside, comfortable cockpit position, four-way heated front seats and a couple of memory buttons, worth their weight in gold.

The centre-mounted touch screen was easy to use and didn’t feel like it overwhelmed the space. The steering wheel is not cluttered and the navigation came up on the dash. Plenty of room in the back seat for the occasional trip with friends, but I personally wouldn’t care to sit in the middle seat.

Driving the car was effortless. Took me a while to get the feel of how much loud pedal I needed to get the car moving, but the couple of times I managed to be in the first row at the lights demonstrated that the single motor version is no slouch.

I’m not a fan of one-pedal driving so I selected light regeneration during the setup. Given the congestion around Broadbeach, I cancelled the navigation using Hey Google so I could go for a spin up the M1.

Quite slow to respond, about 15 seconds, which made me wonder if I was doing something wrong. But there was also the same lag responding to my request to take me home. (Editor’s note: Polestar says a roaming connectivity issue was not picked up prior to media cars being issued, and will be fixed).

Handling was excellent and the car had good visibility all around including out the back.

So would I buy one? Hell yes! But I don’t think Polestar is making it easy.

The base price is great, I can step into the Void (insider Polestar joke) with the free colour and standard range from $63,310 drive away in Queensland.

For another $5,000 I can have FWD Long Range with the 78 kWh battery and a WLTP range of 510-540 km. That feels like good value, but I‘m not sure about paying yet another $5,000 to upgrade to two motors. I don’t need to get two tonnes to 100 km/h in 4.7 seconds.

Then there are the option packs. There are three and if you added them all it would be another $19,000, taking you well into LCT territory.

The pilot pack for $5,000 gives you upgraded driver aids including adaptive cruise control, 360-degree cameras and fancy headlights. I could be persuaded.

The next pack, “Plus” has more interior comforts, better sound, lighting and a grocery bag holder. It also has a heat pump! Aghhhh, I’m not paying six grand for a heat pump. If you sell an EV, the heat pump should be standard equipment.

The “Performance” pack I’ll leave to your imagination, but needless to say, I’ve never felt the need to pay for $8,000 for gold valve caps.

My memory of Polestar was the signature electric blue. It was awesome, but where is it? The current choice is Void (black) which is complementary, then snow, magnesium, thunder, moon and midnight all at $1,400 each.

I mean, it’s a great muted palette if I lived in the arctic north and I wanted something that wouldn’t attract the attention of polar bears. But seriously, where’s the red, yellow or orange, or even better the traditional Polestar blue?

So have Polestar lived up to their high-performance heritage? They aren’t quite there yet in my opinion. I’d certainly buy a Polestar 2 (long-range plus the Pilot pack) off the back of my experience, but I’m pretty sure I’d settle for Void and see how much orange wrap I could get for $1,400 to punch up the look.

David Mitchell is the founder of findmyev.com.au and a closet Volvo driver.

Kickstarter Quick Picks: GeekDad Approved ‘Final Girl’ Is Back With More Thrills and Chills in ‘Series 2’

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No matter where you go in Wolfe Asylum, noises and voices always seem to echo. It is particularly frightening when one of the residents cackles or a group of them cheer during a game of bingo in the common room. Those noises are nothing, however, compared to the blood-curdling shrieks of terror generated by the evil brand of medical “care” the Ratchet Lady is giving the asylum’s residents and staff. What will you do when the maniacs come?

-From Madness in the Dark, one of the Final Girl Series 2 Feature Films

After a highly successful first Kickstarter campaign in 2020, Van Ryder Games is back with a second serving of horrifying solo adventures with Final Girl Series 2.

What Are Kickstarter Quick Picks?

Kickstarter Quick Picks are short looks at projects currently on Kickstarter that are of interest to me, and by extension, many of our GeekDad readers. A Quick Pick is not an endorsement of the Kickstarter campaign, nor have I (as yet) received any product copies to review. If you like what you see here, go check out the campaign and decide for yourself if you’d like to back it, or wait until GeekDad has had a chance to go hands-on. As always, caveat emptor—let the buyer beware.

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

What Is Final Girl Series 2?

Final Girl is an immersive horror solo board game, where you play as the “Final Girl” in a horror film, attempting to survive and defeat the killer. The game system works by combining a core box with interchangeable “Feature Film” boxes, which create different thematic experiences for the player. The first Kickstarter campaign was delivered to backers in late 2021, to critical acclaim and the delight of horror movie-loving board gamers everywhere. Final Girl is such a fantastic game that I awarded it our GeekDad Approved badge. You can read my review of Final Girl here.

Much like in the original campaign for Final Girl, the Final Girl Series 2 Kickstarter campaign has multiple pledge levels. The lowest point of entry is the A La Carte pledge, which for $20 gets you any one of the Feature Film boxes, and you can add other items as you see fit. If you’re new to Final Girl, you’re going to want to get at least the Film Debut pledge, which gives you the Core Box (required for playing) as well as the Feature Film box of your choice for $40. From there, you can go all the way up to the Full Franchise, which will net you almost everything from both Kickstarter campaigns. And yes, everything from the first Kickstarter campaign is also available to pick up in the current campaign.

I’m not going to discuss the Series 1 Final Girl items, as you can see those in my review. Instead, I’m going to focus on everything new in Series 2.

Feature Films

At launch, there are 5 new Feature Films, which include new locations, killers, and Final Girls:

Into the Void. Inspired by Alien, this finds new Final Girls Ellen and Jenette facing off against the Evolmorph.

Terror at Station 2891. This one’s a nod to John Carpenter’s The Thing, where you’re trapped in an arctic station but you don’t know who to trust.

A Knock at the Door. This one seems to be inspired by The Strangers, with uninvited guests crashing your party.

Once Upon a Full Moon, a modern take on “Little Red Riding Hood.”

Madness in the Dark. An insane asylum is the setting for this one that feels like a mix of Silent Hill and House on Haunted Hill.

Miniatures

An optional purchase to increase immersion, for $20 you get a box containing all the Final Girls and Killers from all of the Series 2 Feature Films. So far, they’ve only shown the designs for the Terror at Station 2891 Feature Film. There’s also a Series 1 box available.

Vehicle Packs

Similarly, Van Ryder Games is offering two $10 Vehicle Packs, so you can replace your vehicle tokens with plastic miniatures if you desire.

Storage Boxes and Game Mats

One of the new additions to the Series 2 campaign is storage boxes for both S1 and S2 campaigns, to hold all of the individual game, miniature, and game mat boxes. Also making an appearance for this campaign is a Series 2 Game Mat Set, which is redesigned for both the special features in the Series 2 Feature Films and the Vignette Films.

Why Check Out Final Girl Series 2

As both a horror movie fan and a board gamer, I love the Final Girl series. It manages to satisfyingly capture the cat-and-mouse tension of the final girl trope, as you desperately try to defeat the killer who is trying to end your life.

Like I said in my review of Final Girl, this game is obviously made by people who love horror films. Each of the Feature Films plays with different genres of horror and provides its own unique gaming challenges. And being able to mix and match locations, killers, and Final Girls provides a massive amount of replayability.

The Final Girl Series 2 Kickstarter campaign is busting through stretch goals and records. At the time I’m writing this, it’s barely 24 hours into the campaign, and already it has out-funded the entire first Final Girl campaign. The funding is currently sitting at over $950K, breaking the record for the most-funded solo-only board game on Kickstarter, and I would not be at all surprised to find that it’s surpassed $1 million by the time this article sees publication. The amazing funding is no doubt due to all of the fantastic reviews from critics and consumers alike.

Just as they did with the first campaign, the stretch goals continue to add to the value of backers’ pledges. Already, a new Vignette Film, Terror From the Grave, will be included as one of those goals. (Vignette Films are like mini Feature Films but without their own locations.) We may see another Feature Film box make an appearance as well, much like it did in the first campaign.

While there aren’t any Kickstarter exclusives in the campaign, it’s still well worth backing now if you’re interested in Final Girl. The first campaign already shipped to backers and was extremely well-received, and you can also readily read reviews and watch playthroughs to see if this is the game for you. The pricing for the boxes is also going to be higher when Final Girl Series 2 goes to retail. And finally, retail copies of Final Girl sold out rapidly from stores and the Van Ryder webstore not long after they became available this winter.

I really can’t recommend Final Girl strongly enough. While I haven’t had a chance to play any of the new Feature Films yet, I’m confident that they’ll provide the same level of immersion and challenge that they did in the first Final Girl campaign. If you’re interested in checking out Final Girl Series 2, head over to their Kickstarter campaign page.

Oh, and by the way… the Series 1 Mystery Box is being offered again, but I can’t tell you what’s in it. (It’s a mystery, after all.) But I will say that if you’re a fan of a certain chainsaw-handed fellow and his boomstick, you may want to grab one for yourself. I know I’ll be picking up the Series 2 Mystery Box, and can’t wait to find out what’s inside!

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