A Winter without Snow?

I can’t say “no snow” because we’ve had a dusting from time to time but that’s not really what you think of when you think of snow. We are now eleven days into January and have really had no significant snow at all.

I did get a “winter cast” alert on my weather app for Thursday but it calls for “little to no accumulation”. I’m probably jinxing things by doing this but if that holds, the next time snow is even in the forecast is on Sunday. We could get almost halfway through January before we see any snow.

Now it isn’t like we are in some kind of major snow belt but we are certainly far enough north to expect snow in the winter months. The weird thing is that places south of here have been hammered a few times with heavy snow. In fact, it seems like it has snowed all around us but it is like there is some magic force field keeping all the storms from hitting here. We’ve ended up with lots of rain while other places were getting the snow.

I just hope this doesn’t mean it is saving itself for March and April when we are looking forward to spring.

I’ve said before that I’m not winter’s biggest fan. According to the calendar, the halfway point is sometime in early February. But late January is usually the coldest time and feels more like the point when you start the slow walk towards spring. The days have been getting longer for a couple of weeks and it does seem noticeable at this point even though it is really just a matter of minutes.

And we’ve had more sunny days than I typically expect. Sunshine at any time of the year is wonderful but it is a little more welcome in winter even though it is deceptive because the sun provides very little warmth at this time of year. (At least outside, the rooms in the house that get sun are always significantly warmer than the rest of the house).

The cold, dark nights do make it much harder for me to leave the house. I suppose if I wasn’t taking dance lessons, I would probably never venture out after the sun goes down.

But I’ve learned to accept that even winter has some beauty associated with it. I know the trees are bare right now but something about the way they stand strong against the cold and I think the bigger ones actually look more impressive without the leaves. You get a much better sense of size I think.

When you have four seasons, you tend to “grade” them. What makes a good or bad season depends on the person. For now, this has been an easy winter. But there is still a long way to go so we’ll see what the remainder brings.