Tough winter could be return of ‘normal’ weather
By Mike Lange
Staff Writer
As I’m writing this, there’s around eight inches of powdery snow covering the back deck and front steps.
The cats normally jump at the chance to go out in the morning. But this time, they took one look at the steps and gave me one of those “You’ve got to be kidding!” looks.
The Morning Sentinel driver is nowhere to be seen at 5 a.m. I imagine that deliveries are bogged down with unplowed driveways and back roads that still need to be sanded.
But every time I hear someone say how rough this winter has been, I try to remind them that it’s been a lot worse in the past.
I’m not talking about the “good old days” of my childhood, either. Remember 2007? I have some photos of our back deck with about 20 inches of snow from two storms that hit us in April. This was a month after the ground started showing signs of green and Wal-Mart was selling flats of marigolds and pansies.
February has been described as a cruel month, since we often get days of bright sunshine with temps in the high 40s, followed by a snowstorm and a blast of arctic air.
But it wasn’t too many years ago that we were traditionally whacked with the “February freeze” where temps rarely got above the single numbers for a week or 10 days.
So this winter could mark the return of the “normal” weather that keeps us bundled up until the opening day of Red Sox season or later.
Jokes about “global warming” or lack thereof are pretty common nowadays. However, you can’t judge the validity of climate change studies based on one or two seasons.
While we’ve been stuck in the deep freeze since a week before Christmas, Alaska has been basking in 30 to 40 degree weather with more ice than snowstorms. The culprit seems to be a dip in the jet stream that’s pouring cold air from northern Canada into the orange groves of Florida.
Another more accurate description of this winter is “long overdue.” Generally, we’ve been milder than normal during the past 10 years or so. I remember sitting in a near-empty restaurant in Greenville a week before Christmas in 2005 with no snow on the ground and temperatures in the high 40s.
A cold winter with no snow is the worst possible combination. The ground is as hard as concrete and pipes freeze faster than a homemade Popsicle.
Nevertheless, we’re all looking forward to the first signs of spring. Usually around mid-February, we get an invasion of redpolls at our bird feeders. Hundreds of the tiny finches seem to come out of nowhere and stick around for about a month. A 50-pound bag of Meaties doesn’t last very long.
Pussy willows start to emerge from the snowbanks around March 1. Then the sun stays up longer, giving us hope that the long ordeal is over.
Meanwhile, I’ve got some shoveling to do. And opening day at Fenway Park is only seven weeks away.
Mike Lange is a staff writer with the Piscataquis Observer. His opinions are his own and don’t necessarily reflect those of this newspaper.