A Mild Winter

The first of February and there’s no snow on the ground but for the scant remnants of weeks-ago plowed and shoveled piles on the curbs and beside drives. The streets and sidewalks are dry. The temperatures have been in the 40s and 50s, and the forecast for the next couple of weeks is for 30s and 40s and little precipitation except for some rain and snow mix, though that should melt off by afternoon. A year ago today we had a storm go through that dumped 18.5 inches of snow in two days. It was frigid. Everything was closed, no one moved. Of course, last year’s storm was no more a refutation of climate change than this year’s mild temperatures and lack of snow are confirmation. There’s a difference between climate and weather. We just bump around from year to year, from extreme to extreme, always awed by each year’s deviation from some imagined average, when we should be awed by the unpredictable, by the unexpected, by the unknown that is what makes up the day-to-day and year-to-year of weather and of life.