Today January 20th is on average the coldest day in Cleveland and so I look on it as mid-winter. From now on, the days get warmer as we approach spring, and so this is a day which puts a song on my lips and joy in my heart, even though it is actually very cold and windy outside today.
An average Cleveland winter sees about 60 inches of snow so you would expect that we should have had around 30 inches already but so far we have had just 15.5 inches, consisting of just two major snowfalls. This is way less than I am used to. Last year too we had hardly any snow.
I must admit that while I like the fact that there is little snow (and especially fewer days of icy sidewalks and roads) my enjoyment is tempered by the fact that consecutive mild winters may be just one more sign of the effects of global warming and I worry about the long-range negative consequences of it. But I try to keep in mind that two years of local weather do not constitute proof of climate change and this may well be due to a statistical fluctuation without any further serious implications and that winter could come roaring back in future years.
But in honor of approaching spring, here are The Beatles singing Here Comes the Sun, a song that always makes me feel great.
I live in Northern Pennsylvania; it’s cold here too. But spring is coming!
Because of a fluke of fate involving some accidentally defrosted steaks, I was just outside in subfreezing howling winds lighting coal in my barbecue and grilling steaks. I’ve never lit a barbecue in such high winds and it blew the charcoal from zero to white hot in a couple minutes! Whee!
I can’t wait for mud season. I mean, “spring.”
We have a ways to go here in Wisconsin, at least in the northern half. It’ll start warming up around mid Fedruary or so. Frozen tundra til then.
This song makes me happy too. It sort of dovetails in my brain with that other great sunshiny song, I Can See Clearly Now.
We’ve had an unusually cold winter here in Southern California (I know, I know. But it’s been cold for us.) But the sun’s been out for the last few days. And I say, it’s all right.
Huh, the song that fits around here is the Iditarod Trail.
Yeah, I like that song too.
I have some other friends of mine who also think nothing of grilling outdoors in awful weather. I have come to the conclusion that such devotees of the grill are hardy souls who seem to actually enjoy the challenge.
In Columbus, we had more snow the week after Christmas than all of last year. Heck with winter. I’m in SE Asia now where it was a comfortable 84 yesterday. I saw a phrase where they were trying to say “ice cold” in English but it came out “solid water cool”. I had enough solid water in my driveway already.
While I’m in Florida this winter, I’m from NH and spend most years there. I always hated spring, even if I could enjoy some aspects of it. The swollen mountain streams taking away the snow melt is awesome in the original sense of the word. But to me, it’s just cold and muddy instead of cold and snowy. Everything is dirty from the retreat of the snow piles, the grass struggles against the salted soil, and there’s always the persistent odor of something vile, in great abundance, that is preserved no longer by the cold of winter. While I’m a dog lover, they’re usually to blame.
Climate change affects different places in many ways. The “winter” temperatures here in Taiwan are slightly different, but a change from a one day yearly low of +5°C isn’t really noticeable. (Yes, I’m hoping to incur jealousy.)
Two years do not make a trend. But of the seven years I’ve lived here, the last two falls and “winters” have been the windiest, with near constant high speed winds for weeks on end. People I know who have lived here their whole lives (some in their 60s) say it’s never been like this outside of typhoon season, not in all the decades that they can remember.
Here on the lee side of northern Lake Michigan the lake taketh away some of the cold but giveth back what the Swedish Mrs Corva calls Sjösnö in return--fine little flakes, but they add up. Typical year’s total snowfall is about 7 or 8 feet. The process reverses later on. By the end of March it will look as if spring is coming. We did have spring one day a few years ago, as I recall.