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Friday, March 14, 2003 Page: 11A
OPINION
WHEN 10 DEGREE mornings are no longer remarkable and nuisance snow becomes
routine, we haven’t so much acclimated to winter as capitulated.
It snowed Thursday, and for the umpteenth time, schools dismissed early and
walks were scraped by shovels. Some places actually added several inches of
insult to 70-some inches of injury this season.
Ho hum. Pass the ice-melt.
The winter of 2002-03 is not a record-breaker – not yet anyway. But once
the snow total is nearly double the average and the monthly heating bills for
some households equal lease payments for certain convertible sports cars,
being the most or worst is no longer significant.
All that matters is it snowed again Thursday. Wave a white flag, if you
think anyone will see it through the squalls.
Yes, the critics of winter have heard it from the Farmer’s Almanac crowd:
This is the season when it’s supposed to be cold and snowy, they say.
Yes, except this year it’s a much colder and much snowier winter.
Anyway, grumbling passes the time between shoveling nuisance from the
sidewalk and finding ways to pick up the kids from an early school dismissal.
We can all bask in the solace of a promised weekend of sunshine and
temperatures in the 50s.
We also know that the winter doesn’t end with a few mild days. In all
likelihood, it will snow again. It does that in March. And in April. On Easter
and on fully opened tulips. And even in May.
In all likelihood, the temperature will dip well below freezing again.
Frost routinely occurs until the middle of May.
Eventually, maybe, someday, chances are, winter will succumb to spring and
there will be relief. And not long after we will be cursing the oppressive
heat. The human condition will continue its cycle, just behind the revolution
of the planet.
Of course, there are exceptions to the norm. People who live to ski and
plow. Seasons that refuse to end. Did we mention 1816? Snow in May, frosts in
June, cold in summer, the year without a summer?
Don’t you worry. At least not this weekend.