In which I confuse 2011 with 1935

As I was heading home from the office this afternoon, I noticed it get really dark and hazy out. A warm front has moved in (It's 84 at the moment!), and rain is supposedly on the way. I wasn't sure what the haze was. Rain, maybe? It didn't really look like it. In any case, visibility was really low. And then it hit me. I was looking at the old Carrier plant.


[Workers take apart a Carrier warehouse this February.]

Carrier, which proudly advertised on the sides of its warehouses that it was "World's Largest Air Conditioning Company", was a fixture in Syracuse for generations. Several years ago, the company moved the bulk of its manufacturing jobs out of town.

In the past year, Carrier (which is now owned by United Technologies Corporation), has been working at an increasingly rapid pace on disassembling many of the old manufacturing and warehouse facilities on its East Syracuse campus. Today was no different, with the noticeable addition of very strong winds. What I was seeing was dust and dirt from the piles of rubble forming a thick soup across Carrier Circle.

In other words, visibility was noticeably reduced in Syracuse this afternoon as the remainder of the city's manufacturing base was literally carried away with the wind. Maybe we could get the federal government to install some windbreaks.

Cross-posted: Duck! Duck! Gay Duck!