No problem, Art. I was just delaying my reply until hurricane season.

Up here, spring means April. Hopefully.

with Minneapolis expecting single digit temps and below zero nites the weather guys on TV are trying to cheer us up by talking about how much longer the days a getting--5:30 sunset and not 4:30--oh wow----

Hurricanes I can handle. We get a weeks, sometimes several weeks, warning. They are unpredictable in their specific track but localized. Even a direct hit, been there - done that, is a day of preliminaries, 24 hours of mauling, a couple hours of life sliding sideways ... then it is passed. Hurricane season is six months long but the actual event is coming, here, and gone. It isn't like winter, inevitable, unavoidable, ever present, and months long.

Hurricanes are like car crashes. They happen. Here in lurid Technicolor, then gone. You live through them, make it and pick up the pieces, or don't.

Winter in northern climates is a slow grind, a test of endurance, patience, sanity. Cold, wet, miserable, and punctuated by blizzards, and just enough warmth to keep the frigidity from becoming routine. A grind. A grind that wears you down and returns every year. A stalking beast that never goes away for long. An animal that always eventually wins.

So I moved south. Family has history down here. Winter still makes a showing but it is a bit milder, having feasted on the souls of Yankees it is less voracious, and after a few days there is enough warmth to feel my bones warm up. It is still a slap in the face, but it doesn't take up residence; find a job, raise kids, and get into local politics.

This winter has been harsh, as such things go round here. It isn't over yet but I think it is one of the shorter, seven week winters. What made this one bad was the frequency of the hard freezes. At least a half-dozen bitter cold fronts and most of them had three very cold nights in a row. But, even then, mercifully, kind of like being turned into a newt, it gets better. And it feels like we are on the up swing. Bring the heat baby. A coconut breeze is coming and I can't wait.

My brother, who retired to Bemidji, MN, always says, "There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes." He is probably out ice fishing right now.

Of course, I cheer him on from my location in southern California...

for those "not in the know" Bemidji is sort of the last place North in that part of the world that is not a village or State park.even in the part of Canada just North of Bemidji it's just bogs and lakes,unlike the Prairie Provinces to the West,where they have farms,citys and people.the town has a place in my heart as i went to the college there in 1969 when i was out of the Army and looking to get "off the grid" as we would say now.my roommate did a demo for a recreational leadership class on how to make a lean-too and survive if your car went off the road.as a guy from NY that was a wake up call on what to expect when winter set in for real.

The sun was finally out yesterday, and the temperature soared to 20 F, so I decided to frolic in the sunshine.

Here are my springtime activities:

1. Put new skids on my snowblower
2. Cleaned the ice, salt, and sand off the garage floor
3. Chopped the packed snow and ice off the driveway
4. Scraped snow off the roof
5. Took down the last of the Christmas lights
6. Dug out extention cords from under 60 inches of packed snow

Today:

It's snowin' again!!!!!

Cold fronts are coming my way after the recent glorious warming trend which has had me opening the windows in the afternoon. On the up side the forecast is for temperatures to get colder but, fortunately, nowhere near as cold as it was.

It's just getting started for us in the midwest. Temps are hovering around zero with some areas blanketed under several feet of snow. The bright side is when the temps get up to double digits it actually feels warm.

Whoo hoo!

- 46*C today, with a little wind chill of course.

but -1*C predicted for Thursday.

-- I agree with Susan though, what does a person from Florida have to complain about in terms of temperature? BTW, I heard the shuttle Columbia is being rolled out today for its last shot into space.

Spring hasn't come yet to southern Cal - that is the time of year when the grass turns brown.....