Snowless winter a surprise gift from Mother Nature
Knowing my luck, you’re reading this while buried up to your clavicles in snow – thus spoiling the premise of my column and dashing any hopes of an essentially snowless winter outside of a couple light dustings.
But with fingers, toes, eyes and legs crossed, here’s hoping the delicious weather pattern holds through March.
So what has happened to spare us from the wrath of snow and ice?
Perhaps global warming has played a part. Perhaps all the hot air billowing from our President and the posse of Democratic presidential candidates has played a part. Perhaps the Russians meddling with our weather patterns has played a part.
Perhaps Mother Nature has decided to be sweet rather than sour in our neck of the woods.
Or perhaps our snowless winter has been a Democratic hoax.
Whatever the factors at play, I’m loving this. I simply loathe snow. I consider Frosty the Snowman to be a bigger villain than Darth Vader.
The fact that we have zipped through most of February without getting smothered by an avalanche has been monumental. I remember some Februarys with crushing snowfall totals that bent backs as well as souls.
The first half of February usually is the snowiest part of the year. Granted, nothing seems normal anymore. We’ve been ushered into the Age of the New Normal.
We may not need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. But to get a big snow event we need two things: cold air and a dynamic storm system. This winter we have not seen much of either and when one comes through the other has been lacking.
When they travel in tandem, it’s transformative – changing grass, cement and asphalt into frozen tundra. Snowflakes can pile up faster than the national debt and imprison us in a glacial vault.
The world is a better place when it’s not a gigantic snow globe.
If we did have cold air in place, we’d still need a big storm system to come in to give us the prospect of getting over half a foot of snow.
This winter the storm track has been working in our favor. The Pacific jet has been active — leading to a very active winter in the west, but the storm track has stayed north of us as it has moved east.
Of course, our good fortune could vanish in a popup blizzard because I may have jinxed us all. You see, I gave up shoveling snow and running my snow blower for Lent.
May God be with us.