Faith Can Move Mountains... But Dynamite Works Better

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Almighty Snow Demons, I Ask Thee, Make The Winter Return

And so here we are... the last day of winter. It didn't seem long enough. It never is.

I can't deny it anymore... spring is coming. Oh, sure, we can get snow in April and May. And even in June. And it's not that long before August comes, and the first chilly nights turn up...

I've seen the first shoots of garden plants coming through the soil, so when one sees them... the game is up. Old man winter is giving up the ghost and scampering off, waiting to come back with a full force in just a few months.

It really is my favourite season, by the way. The cold and the chill, and the wind so harsh that it feels like a knife cutting inside your throat... well, that's what's so good about it!

Now, now, before you go off and start calling for my head on a pike, think about it. Now you can tease me about the onset of spring, all you warm weather worshippers. Lord knows I've teased you about how wonderful the winter is. 


This past winter, we've seen big storms hit various areas. As I recall, Al Roker was stranded halfway across America at one point. Rumors of his survival based on eating his cameraman remain unsubstantiated.

A few weeks ago, after Toronto had been hit by a storm, a columnist wrote about the overreaction city and school officials made to the storm. He described real winters. His mother, as a Prairie girl, lived on a farm, where one winter day, she found herself caught in a white out. Only by following cowbells into a barn did she survive. That, my friends, is a real winter.

He went on to describe living on Baffin Island in Canada's far north for several years. During one storm, the temperature went down to -35C. Add to that wind gusts well over 100 kilometres an hour, you can imagine the wind chill. During the night, he heard this ungodly roar. In the morning, he noticed his neighbour's roof had been torn off by the wind. That, my friends, is a real winter.

Weather forecasters seem to overreact, I think. These people (who incidentally get paid to be wrong 90%  of the time) have in the last few years developed a habit of calling storms Snowmaggedon or Snowzilla or Dear God, We're All Going To Die! Eat Your Children! As to the storm itself? Well, it might dump 25 centimetres of snow on the ground, but it's nothing to get worked up about.

Not all of them do that, mind you. The forecasters here in the nation's capital tend to take things in stride. They might say, "We're getting twenty centimetres out of this system, so take care driving in tomorrow morning." Very calm, reasonable, and reassuring.

Contrast that with the spineless cowards at Global Television in Toronto (more on that in a future blog, tenatively called Why Canadians Hate Toronto), who, at the sign of ten centimetres of snow, proclaim it as a major snow emergency, and for thirty centimetres tell the audience they must consider taking a page from the Donner Party.


Goodbye, winter. I still love you. Hurry back just in time for the end of August.










17 comments:

  1. Only you...only YOU would mourn the end of winter!

    I can feel the winter love in this blog. It makes me shiver....

    (I like the penguins at the bird feeder.)

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  2. Meanwhile, out here in the desert....
    William,, you can have that white stuff! Yuck.
    Cute blog!

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  3. William, it is so WONDERFUL to hear someone sing the praises of winter. I am so dang tired of the whiners! Oh waa, it's so cold. Waa, I had to wear a hat and it messed up my hair. Waa. I had to scrape my windshield.

    Still, chin up. Spring flowers are rather pretty.

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  4. We've been getting spring weather here and I'm thrilled. If I still drank, I'd be busting open a bottle of champagne.

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  5. William, I will have to do the Spring/Summer post...just for you!!!

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  6. As a commuter from Waterloo to the GTA, I'm not sad that winter is ending. True, the newscasters definitely blew that one Toronto area storm way out of proportion, but I still didn't venture onto the roads - mainly because of the other idiots out there who don't know how to drive when one snowflake hits the ground.

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  7. William, what can I say? For me, it's party time woohoo. Barbecues, sun bathing, flowers everywhere. Winter is, well, it's cold. I do love the snowbunnie cartoon.
    I will think of your lonliness for winter when I am sitting on my deck in summer gear, drinking a refreshingly cold lemonade.

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  8. I hate summer! It gets to 95+ about 5-6 months out of the year here, and so I am always ready for fall. Spring wreaks too much havoc on my allergies to speak of fondly.

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  9. Loved the polar bears cartoon, but I have to say...I'm mighty glad to see the end of Winter. Usually, I'm like you - I rather enjoy winter. But this one's been exceptionally cruel. I mean, we got so much snow, the story made CNN! See my my recent post Sanity Returned for some photos.

    htty://scattered-joy-blog.blogspot.com

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  10. I'm with you. I like winter. I don't know why people complain, it's a great season.

    But I also love spring, summer and fall. Though round these parts we have two seasons, Winter and August.

    Not sure if we'll get hit again. Too early to tell. No flowers are up in our yard. Everybody is still tucked in, sleepy and snug.

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  11. For most of my life, I lived in snow country and I never, ever got to take a snow day off from school or work. Now I live in the Seattle area and when two flakes hit the ground the schools are closed for the day.

    I want a re-do.

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  12. I'm wearing short sleeves and flip-flops today. Somehow, I just don't feel deprived. Weird!

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  13. I too am mourning the end of winter, we really didn't have a winter this year with only three little storms. Not enough rain and snow !

    We will have a summer of wildfires...

    cheers, parsnip

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  14. I'm not mourning the end but I do love a good snow storm. Right now though ... I'm excited to start my veg and flower garden.

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  15. I love winter too - especially now that I don't live through it. I just have fond memories of my childhood days playing in forts, having snowball fights and eating icicles off the house. Much more fun remembering than shoveling the driveway! ;)

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  16. We mourn the end of winter where I live, also. It means four months of blistering heat are around the corner. October is always my favorite month, because the weather turns back to tolerable.

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