Spring of our discontent,
A car is damaged by a fallen tree branch in Toronto on Monday.
We all know what extreme weather brings. Cancelled flights, messed up social plans, multiple car collisions on slick roads — and the need to hunker down inside. Throw in confronting the effects of climate change and the mood is not optimistic.
On the upside, extreme weather has always been pure poetry. Read the first line of “Storm Fear” by Robert Frost, written in 1915 long before we realized we had most probably screwed up the planet: “When the wind works against us in the dark …”
That is much more visceral than whining, “The weather is so gross today!” which is what I heard from friends and family — and admittedly myself — all this past weekend in Toronto, where, like most of southern Ontario, we were subjected to a series of what seemed like extreme weather events that created existential despair in even the most hardy of us.
There was rain, there was snow. Ice pellets, then freezing rain. There were howling winds — very noisy in the silence of the night — and such a steep drop in outside temperature that inside my house, despite my extra socks, fleece lined leggings, two sweaters and a cashmere muffler, there was a soul-withering cold I could feel in my bones.
TIMSON continued on E5
Twitter became, as the late media writer David Carr once beautifully wrote in the New York Times about a much more serious storm, a “little campfire of Twitter posts” we could all sit around with our smartphones.
One friend tweeted a picture of pink tulips, saying they were the only thing keeping her going.
I posted a picture of a blazing fire in our hearth — a rare enough occurrence mid-April — and also noted that I had seen a robin wandering dazed in our icy backyard and I’m pretty sure I heard it chirp: “WTF.”
But snow and frigid temperatures in mid-April are more common than you think. Still, almost every year, even if it’s just a few gentle flurries, we vigorously oppose it. Who would have thought, we say, despite much historical evidence to the contrary.
It just seemed to be messier and more of a spiritual affront than usual. Maybe because of so many wearying political events — Syrian airstrikes, pipeline politics, the ever fulminating U.S. President Donald Trump — all we wanted was some sunny warmth and the sense that sitting in an outside café with a coffee and some pleasant company might just be in our near futures again.
Outside my third-floor home office, from huge glass windows, I often study the buds on the trees, thinking on a warm and sunny day I will actually catch the moment they turn into leaves. But maybe that’s May.
Instead, with two weeks left in April, those trees were shedding their stiff branches, which were pinging against my house with alarming force. The front lawn was littered with twigs and small branches. Thousands of people in other sections of the city lost power.
I lost hope. At one point, it was hard to tell my inner howling from the brute force winds outside: “Nooooo!” In the dark early-morning hours, I negatively reviewed my life, lamenting out loud: “I’ve done so many things wrong,” to which my husband sensibly replied: “You’re in the middle of an ice storm in April. That’s what this feels like.”
Perhaps I should apologize to every region in this country that has at some point had an unpleasant “weather event” I did not pay sufficient attention to. I am deeply sorry for your pain. As I’m sure you are for mine.
I was already furious with this reluctant spring, which, normally, on one of those first warm sunny days, can lift you so high up that your spirits soar and you feel capable of anything.
This year, with colder-than-average temperatures and a spring storm in the forecast, we kept our snow tires on and instead of loathing my black winter puffy with a passion — an end-of-winter psychological ritual for me — I was glad to have it.
During this ice-storm weekend, members of my extended family joined countless others at Pearson International Airport early Sunday morning, waiting in vain for flights to be called. Toronto’s downtown Billy Bishop airport cancelled all departing flights on Sunday and received only one arrival all day.
Two other relatives drove Sunday for more than six hours from Toronto to Montreal slowly, but safely. “It could have been worse,” one said.
On Monday morning, the pelting rains were back, as little children delicately picked their way along icy sidewalks on their way to school. Now we’re under a flood watch.
On my radio, an announcer intoned: “Be careful out there. The risk of hydroplaning is real.” I felt like hydroplaning could happen to me with or without my car.
The truth is this vile spring storm will not go down in history and is so far not even a very remarkable weather event. It just hurt, that’s all. Give us a couple of sunny spring days and all will be forgiven. Now about those snow tires …