Well that is why I recommended Austin to you--in Central Texas winter is about 2 months, with few freeze days, and in March the grass is startlingly green.
But you're letting yourself be fooled by a peculiarity of American calendars. The solstices and equinoxes are the middle of their respective seasons, not the start. Because of physics stuff I don't understand, it stays cold and it stays warm for a while--in England, for example, winter comes on during November and February is traditionally the coldest month--but yup, December, January, and February are all cold and snowy. And in my experience there's a lot of truth to the statement that in the Northeast there isn't really a spring, just mud.
I think that year when the weather on Mars was warmer than where you were was the same year I was checking the weather in Duluth against the weather in Helsinki every day. And Helsinki was always warmer. That very snowy winter of '04-'05 was certainly the winter I delivered newspapers in Duluth. I think short of moving to Canada I will always have hard-to-top winter experience from that.
By all accounts Portland, OR doesn't get too extreme. But I still hope you can get Austin. Or here in the Bay Area, which is just ridiculous . . . though the chill rain in winter reminds me why I don't much miss London.
no subject
But you're letting yourself be fooled by a peculiarity of American calendars. The solstices and equinoxes are the middle of their respective seasons, not the start. Because of physics stuff I don't understand, it stays cold and it stays warm for a while--in England, for example, winter comes on during November and February is traditionally the coldest month--but yup, December, January, and February are all cold and snowy. And in my experience there's a lot of truth to the statement that in the Northeast there isn't really a spring, just mud.
I think that year when the weather on Mars was warmer than where you were was the same year I was checking the weather in Duluth against the weather in Helsinki every day. And Helsinki was always warmer. That very snowy winter of '04-'05 was certainly the winter I delivered newspapers in Duluth. I think short of moving to Canada I will always have hard-to-top winter experience from that.
By all accounts Portland, OR doesn't get too extreme. But I still hope you can get Austin. Or here in the Bay Area, which is just ridiculous . . . though the chill rain in winter reminds me why I don't much miss London.
M
late and rambling