Angels and Rusty Buckets

Angels and Rusty Buckets

This winter we have held on to the recent trend towards short and really tough seasons.  Fall here in the northern south was long and nice and it felt like we would slide right on through without much of a winter to tax our good natures and patience.  Just a romp through maybe some cold days, a dust of snow here and there.  A bit-o-rain and Spring would come joyfully wafting warmly into our lives, renewing spirits, bringing the greening of buds and the wonderful daffodils everywhere.

Well, that was a stupid dream.

Like last summer – or rather, take last summer … Spring dragged out wet and cold and it seemed like Summer would never get here.  Then – bamm!  it was ninety degrees and hotter.  In like one day.  Typhoons crashed through the trees every other day, popping up in weirdly disconnected places.  I’d leave the house on my motorcycle in clear sunny weather, get twenty miles down the road and crash!  Thunderstorm!!!  Make it through that, all soaked to the socks, and ten miles later, no clouds and it’s nearly 100 degrees and I melt at every traffic light.

My kids and wifey and all met up for Christmas in Florida.  When we left there had been no winter at all yet.  We had a very nice time .. Florida was all warm and stuff.  Got back, backed into the New Year, still no winter.  First couple of weeks of January is when we started to think we had skirted a hard season.  Of course right then we had one snowfall after the other, with rain, super freezing cold (for southern Virginia), more snow.  Schools have been closed for nearly two weeks.  Back roads, which means our road, have been a slip-n-slide. 

This means that I, who has never had any kind of a sick day in nearly twenty years, has been laid low for a week with a cold.  You just can’t slap people around with weather like this and not have them get ill.  The human body just doesn’t know how to take it.  One day an old guy is riding his motorcycle without a jacket because it’s so warm and the next he’s shoveling two feet of snow off of long driveway and can’t feel his ears.

IT’S NOT RIGHT!

Between snow and ice storms I had to clear off my motorcycle and then cover it before the next hail of shit.  Now it’s frozen to the ground.  Every time it melts a bit, the bike sinks lower into the mud and then freezes there overnight.  I’m gonna need to crane it out if, and hopefully when, Spring does finally come.

There used to be a sort of cosmic justice or karma to seasonal curves like this.  Or, a cold and clammy summer generally was followed by a warmish and light winter and kind of warming up to better summers and colder winters over a span of generations.  Now it’s – like – you just don’t know. 

All the Farmers’ Almanac wisdom (?), like, “You know it’s gonna be a hard winter if the squirrels’ tails are bushier than normal.”  “You know winter’s gonna come early, if the geese leave for the south early.”  “You know it’s gonna be a hot summer, if all the turtles start crossing the road from right to left, instead of left to right.”  “You know it’s gonna be a wet Spring if the bullshit is piled in mounds, instead of flat pancakes.”  None of this works anymore.

“Red sky at night, sailors delight.” Used to mean that if a sunset was all rosy, the next day would be nice.  Now it just means something beyond the horizon is on fire – like a hazardous chemical train has derailed and exploded.

I can only say that I really appreciate the improvements in weather science.  Most of the time, they pretty much nail it on the hour anymore.  Right down to the exact GPS where you are standing.  So that helps, but if you’re of my generation it’s hard to get to used to that and remember to check your stupid smartphone weather app.

So that part is on me.