We get these nice, very welcome thaws every winter. And they stink.

I’m not sure what it is, but suspect that all the moisture in the air holds pollutants closer to the ground. A bus passes and the diesel fumes hang and hang and hang. The freeway traffic, just a block or so away, reeks as it does at no other time of the year.

And the Grede foundry, more than a mile away in Wauwatosa, has been told many times to clean up its smell, but still hasn’t done so. That smell comes and goes like the miasma of something rotting.

The thaw is welcome. The air pollution that comes with it is pretty discouraging, though. It shows how far we have to go.