Another season, another rank disappointment.
February creeped into town last week on little Spring paws and settled on its haunches, looking and feeling pretty much the way January did: temperate, mildly chilly, unimpressive, lacking in seasonal character, and snowless, utterly snowless.
Is it fair that an autumn as limp and formless as just passed should be followed by a winter as worthless on all terms by which we traditionally rank winter? The last, and only, snowy day of the season was, by my memory, back on Dec. 2 or thereabouts. Since then, a long string a drab days of no distinction. Every ten days or so, wishful-thinking meteorologists predict a show shower, always erroneously. Meanwhile, the simple-minded anchormen and women commend them on the great beach weather they've delivered.
It's enough to make you move to Vermont or Upper Michigan, just drive north until you see a drift. My shovel has seen no action this winter. My son has given up on his dreams of a snowball fight. My trips to the skating rink feel somehow dishonest. Weather should have poetry. Seasons should create natural demarcations in our lives. We currently exist in a "No Exit" kind of climate, in which one day, one week, one month is much like another, causing a sensory numbness sets in. If the darkness and coldness of winter engenders depression in many souls, as the sociologists insist, then I believe the absense of winter-like conditions during winter create a different sort of unsettling.
Some weather reports call for snow tomorrow. If I'm wrong, hurrah! Otherwise, I say: Ha!
UPDATE: Perhaps the Gods heard my plaintive cry last night. This Monday morning, fluffy flakes the size of quarters are coming down steady.
FURTHER UPDATE: Ah, well. It didn't stick. Doesn't stick, doesn't count.
I used to think that all the talk about global warming was exaggerated if not completely false. Now, though, I'm not so sure. Something is happening to our climate.
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