Noticing the year 12/08/08: Snow and cold (not at the same time)

[urbpan]

Yesterday we had a perfect first snow. Why was it perfect? It came the first week of December (not October) on a day I wasn't working, it was light and fluffy and picturesque, and it was gone by the afternoon. It was replaced with bitter cold. I've promised not to complain about the weather. Is calling 14 degrees f "bitter" a complaint? I think it's a reasonable objective description. Unless the soles of your feet are covered with thick white fur, 14 degrees is just plain bitter, baby.

Suffice it to say, this is New England, and on Wednesday it will be 60 degrees and pouring rain.

I posted to damnportlanders earlier, explaining that it got this cold "several times per winter" in Boston (I was saying that people say that it gets cold in Portland, and asking if it got THAT cold). Alexis took major umbrage at the word "several."
She would have you believe that it gets cold and stays cold for half the year, when it's actually more like somewhere between five and eight months. I think she remembers a few winters ago, when the temperature struggled to reach double digits for a week or so. I believe there was a little car on Mars telling us what conditions there were like, and I posted saying (essentially) that the little car was warmer than I was.

It gets pretty cold in Boston for a few days every winter, sometimes longer. Every winter is different, with the past winters being warmer on average. We get somewhere between "not much" snow and "oh my god when will it stop" snow (as in 2005). The most unkind thing about Boston winters (I'm reporting, not complaining) is their lingering quality. Off the top of your head, tell me what months encompass winter. I think the collective unconscious (influenced by television, no doubt) would say that winter starts in December--maybe around Christmas--and goes until some time in January. After all, the groundhog decides whether there's more winter on the second day of February.

Here in the Northeast, depending on the year and depending on where exactly you are, winter usually starts around Halloween. If you live in upstate New York or Vermont or God help you Maine, it's already snowed a couple times, all the leaves are gone, and the sun goes down right after lunch. In Boston we've gotten lucky lately, and the last couple falls have gone straight on to Thanksgiving. But I remember tossing rocks on the ice to hear them chirp, on past Thanksgivings. And then, when is it over? On a clip show The Simpsons made fun of their own Valentines day episode, which showed Lisa and Ralph walking home from school without coats. I can't remember a single February in my life where I wasn't wearing a coat, probably indoors too. By February, you can't imagine that winter will continue. And then it does. March is spring, though, isn't it? It is if you live in North Carolina or (dare I say it) Portland Oregon. But not up in New England. Sometimes even the plants are fooled--the ever increasing sunlight convinces new growth, which is then slammed on by a foot of snow or an inch of ice or a week of below freezing temperatures. Take that you uppity crocus!

And it goes on. There's a tease of spring in April. Sometimes we get freak warm spells. An 80 degree day in April in Boston feels hotter than July, because the trees haven't leafed out yet and there's no shade. But usually we get the cold rain, and occasional ice and snow. You look at the calendar, flip back a month and see "first day of spring" and mutter to yourself "Lousy Smarch Weather!" But then May comes and the green splendor explodes around you everywhere, so fast that you don't know what hit you, and you find yourself standing there wearing a parka and flip flops. It's that kind of place.

Not that I'm complaining.

Comments

[candent.livejournal.com]

I am in PA and I'd say winter = December - February.

[miz-geek.livejournal.com]

The thing that bugs me most about New England winters so far (this is my 4th) is how long they last and how short the days are. I don't mind the snow or the cold that much, but getting dark at 4 o'clock is disturbing, and having to wait until May for real spring is a bummer.

Ohio wasn't this bad. Hell, I think Minnesota even has more daylight.

When I lived in Virginia a few years ago, my sister told me she was planning to visit during the kids' school break. "We'll see you in early spring, at the end of April." Honestly, I thought she was kidding. The end of April is LATE spring, right? Nope.

When I was a kid in Texas, we were always annoyed when spring break (which was mid-March) was too cold for us to lay out in the sun and work on our tans. It was usually in the 60's, which is pretty frigid to most Texans.

[brush-rat.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was certainly among the reasons I escaped there. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure my trajectory was off. The three months of stupid heat in the summer here kill me almost as much as the winters did.

[rudbekia.livejournal.com]

Today was pretty darn cold. Though overall, I'd say winters in Boston are pretty mild. Granted I've only been here for four of those winters, and I am glad they are fairly mild! (I grew up in Wisconsin and went to college in Chicago)

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's just a cruel twist of nature that humans have such a small window of temperate comfort, maybe between 60 and 80 degrees F. Or maybe modern folks are just wussy. I too try not to complain about the weather anymore; it's pointless and banal, though it does build a certain solidarity in some situations. I grew up in Phoenix where it was too hot, then spent over 20 years in Ithaca NY, where it was too cold...surely there is a more gracious way to relate to the turning of the wheel, no? That's the Pantheist part - honoring the 'God' in everything.

~Flanuese in DC (not much interesting weather)

[greenminions.livejournal.com]

Was it 14 with a nasty wind? I can handle 14 as long as the wind is non existent and it doesn't feel in the negatives. I don't like it when my slightly wet hair freezes when the wind chill is -24 in March :(

[weofodthignen]

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.

M
late and rambling