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Springing in with a whine
Author: TriSec    Date: 03/31/2018 11:41:36

Good Morning.

Maybe, just maybe, we've made it into spring. March came in like a lion and roared for many weeks here in the northeast. But the last few days have been mild, and we're expecting brilliant sunshine all day and fairly benign conditions.


But we've become soft. New England had a relatively mild winter this year. We only had two storms of note in the early going - some snow just before Christmas, and the big nor'easter in January that flooded downtown Boston.

But that's it - most of the winter there was nothing on the ground. Although we did have two weeks of Siberian cold; the Charles River even froze bank-to-bank, which is a rare occurrence around here.

It's been the last two weeks or so that I've been comparing notes with some friends around the country. My sister from another mother reported that when she was little, Philadelphia would often get cold, but there was usually not much snow on the ground that she could remember.

A friend that moved away to Ohio had posted about a 70-car pileup out her way during a mere two inches of snowfall, and she felt that since people out there never see snow anymore, they've all forgotten how to drive on it.

I have the opposite memory - it always seemed to me that we had snow on the ground all winter when we were younger. December, January, February...we expected it. But spring always came in March and April.

It's been the last 20 years or so that there's been a shift. Early winter here is often dry and sometimes mild. Storms have shifted now to February, March, and April. The recent "big one" (winter of 2015) I recall being mild until February vacation or so - then we got storms literally every weekend for six weeks. We were still in waist-deep snow in the backcountry into April that year.

Just last year, it remained cold and miserable into June. I didn't plant my garden on Mother's Day as I have done for years - we waited until Memorial Day. It really wasn't until nearly Flag Day that most of the gardens in the city were in full bloom and the weather finally warmed up for good.

So now I can channel that youthful bravado. We never cared about the weather when we were younger. I've got stories about blizzards, sledding, and even Scout trips that took place in monstrous storms. We'd never do that today, although I bet the lawyers have something to say about that.

Nay, it's the constant groveling and whining I see these days. We have a mild winter, then we get a couple of storms in a row. ENOUGH! WHERE IS SPRING! THE GROUNDHOG CAN BITE ME! and who knows what else have been circulating around the book of face in the last two weeks.

Being a New Englander, we've long subscribed to the Norwegian theory that there is no bad weather, only bad clothing. Somehow, we've gotten away from that mindset in these six states. I don't know how you fared in other parts of our wee corner of the internet.


 
 

1 comments (Latest Comment: 03/31/2018 13:44:30 by BobR)
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