Following on from the previous post, we’ve just had a our first real blast of cold weather. That old Jetstream has dipped south and hauled in a load of cold air from the north, bringing us double-digit negative temperatures and a fair bit of snow. To counter that, I would urge you to remember that while we have a continental weather system here, we’re still on the same latitude as Rome, and unlike some places in Canada, it really doesn’t get very cold here at all.

Anyway, the river has only partly frozen over and the snow, in a few waves, has only amounted to five or six inches in total, so it hasn’t really been too bad. In past winters we’ve been seriously sub-zero for weeks by this time, but this past week has been the first properly cold period of the winter so far. Funnily enough, as a thaw sets in, today has been the first mass school bus cancellation of the winter, but then thawing roads are significantly more treacherous than fully snowed up roads, so it’s understandable.

When I first arrived here, lying snow was such a novelty for me. Fifteen years in, though, and it has just become a chore, particularly as the trend over that period has been for milder weather in general, just with a few snowy blasts to keep us all on our toes. We haven’t had a decent freeze-up for a few years now, where we’d see people tearing along the frozen river on their snowmobiles, but we do get these intermittent blasts of icy weather, which is just enough to remind people that snow is a pain in the bum, but not enough for us to get used to it.

With climate change very much in the news these days, it’s tempting to imagine that we’re set for permanently milder winters. That may be true, but climate change takes much longer to have a real effect so I guess we’re simply in a milder cycle right now, and that at any time we could have a horrible winter with months of snow and ice. I do like the snow, and the cold weather in general, but the quick alternating between really cold and really mild does get on your nerves a bit.

Anyway, we have six or seven weeks yet when the weather can get really stupid, and it isn’t until the March Break that we can count on there not being horrible winter storms. For now I will appreciate the thaw, once the ice has gone, and wait for the next wave.