Winter wonderland

Apparently the holidays are over. I have no idea where they went. I know they were here because I have no money left and I put the tree back in the box myself. The rest of it just passed me by.



Well not quite. It snowed. It snowed a lot, several times, starting with the big one on Christmas Eve. It snowed like Jack the Bear. And it got really cold. Minneapolis cold, Fairbanks cold. It is just now approaching freezing for the first time in about two weeks. The snow is not the worst part. The extended zero-degree weather outranks it. All of it is to be expected--for after all it's winter on the prairies--and all the cheery TV weather personalities got their "White Christmas" which they breathlessly had anticipated for two weeks. Maybe they should all church up on my driveway.



But this much snow, this regularly, is unusual here. We've already had over 20 inches, more than all of last year's snows combined. Parking lots are punctuated with semi-truck-high piles of snow. Road crews have labored countless hours behind plows. When the sun is out it's a blinding white world lacking only polar bears. We have had a whole season's worth of winter in about three weeks. And I'm not complaining. If I didn't want winter I would have gone to Arizona a long time ago.



The last few years have had relatively little snow. It seemed the extreme cold was a little less. Then this year the hammer came down, so I guess it all equals out. The climate change fanatics will claim both that the last few milder winters and this arctic one are--in their dememted view--clear signs of drastic climate alteration. I don't think so. I would agree that the climate has changed enough that the glaciers melted, but that might be a function of the earth's axis doing its slow turn--nothing you caused with your Dodge Ram or your Weber ourdoor grill.



It simply seems noteworthy that winter is off to a rather unusual flying start. The last one I remember with temperatures like these, for this long, was in December 1989. Somehow we survived that and Spring came along again. I just regret that the holidays, with all their joy and warmth, go by in a flash and yet they leave us the cold for three long months, which do not go by in a flash. I am pretty sure that the compacted snow on my driveway will be sparkling all winter to remind us of our very own winter olympics.

Now the thaw is under way. I can see patches of concrete and aging acorn husks on the edge of my walk. Warm weather is coming fast!