All I Want for Christmas is Decent Winter Weather.

Snow Cat (Photo credit: clickclique)

I lived in Pennsylvania most of my life. So, during the winter, I was always sure that there would be at least one snow. And even if we didn’t get snow, it was still cold and, well, wintry. Since I’ve lived in North Carolina, I’ve become a bit acclimatized to our more temperate weather. Long, exceedingly hot summers, and warmer winters have all ingratiated themselves to me.
Somewhat.
At this time of year, though, I always feel a pang of sadness, realizing that in just a few weeks we will be on the rise back into summer again. That means that our days for good cold weather and snow are numbered.
Lately, here, we have had a warmer spell. Not really warm, per se, but it’s not really cold either. The days warm up to the mid sixties, and you don’t need your sweater. As the day progresses, it does get cooler, especially since it gets dark so early, but it’s not downright bitter and gnawingly cold.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have some bizarre desire to spend my winter fending off frostbite or shoveling snow. Rather, I would just love a few days where we could look out on the silent world of freshly fallen snow, hear the wind in the pines and set up the crock pot with Hot Cocoa and eat homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese.
I don’t want ice, and I don’t want three feet of snow. Just under a foot would do nicely, and as we typically have a decent warm up after a snow anyway, it would be fairly easy to handle.
Certainly, it would be necessary to go and buy the heck out of some milk and bread. One of the few things that makes a real snow scary is the blatant possibility that the stores may run out of those winter food staples. I heard once, that a snow storm came on so rapidly that local stores didn’t have the chance to stock up and folks had to make due with only minimal bread and milk supplies.
The horror.
I always feel bad for cows and bakers. Imagine knowing that you have one of the two most coveted survival goods and that a major winter event is headed your way. It’s got to be terrifying.
Nevertheless, I don’t think our luck will hold, at this late date, for a White Christmas, which is distressing. I’m only going to be on this earth a short time, and it would be nice to have several White Christmases before I shove off permanently.
Not that it is logistically desirable to mess up a nice Christmas with snow and prevent the visits of family and friends and thereby ruin the one day a year when everyone gets along and plays nice.
It doesn’t really matter much at this point, because it will be sunny and mid sixties again for Christmas, and if there is snow at all this year, it will probably be wet and short lived.
Maybe next year.
In the meantime, I’ll have to be content to remember one specific cold day, when I nearly froze my keester off, for those long hot and intolerably steamy summer days that are, unfortunately, right around the corner.