Now that the holiday season is upon us, Mother Nature is also stepping back in to make another annual seasonal change.  For those of you not in the know, the winter season “officially” starts on Thursday, December 21^st.

The National Weather Service says we should expect a snowier winter than normal, but with temps a little warmer than average.  This is all due to the El Nino weather pattern, which influences both temperature and precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere.  Both the ‘Farmer’s Almanac’ and ‘Old Farmer’s Almanac’ are predicting cold and snowy conditions for the winter months ahead.  I haven’t seen any woolly caterpillars yet this year, so I’m not sure what their brown/black stripes are telling us yet (the longer/wider the black bands, the colder and more severe the winter is supposed to be). 

Who’s right?  Who knows.

No matter how you slice it, whatever the prognosticators, meteorologists, or tea leaves may say, I think we can all agree that the winter weather in the four-state region is nowhere close to being as cold and snowy as it was 30-40 years ago.

Don’t believe me?  When was the last time anyone had the chance to go ice skating on Big Pool or Blair’s Valley Lake?  Sure, it may get down to the single digits for a night or two now, but I can clearly remember long stretches of temps in the teens for days or weeks at a time in my youth.  Hell, we used to test the thickness of the ice at Big Pool by driving the front wheels of a car down on it off of the boat ramp to see if it held.  We had hockey sticks at the ready in the basement.  “Snow days” off from school were pretty common-place back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but now, a season can go by with only a few two-hour delays to get the roads back to drivable condition.

Speaking of the white stuff, how much snowfall have we had in the past few years?  I got a small, gas-powered snow-thrower back in 2021 and have yet to even fire it up.  Oh sure, we may have a big snow once every five years or so, but I can clearly remember a seasonal total measured in feet in my younger days.  The ground would be white from late December to early March.  We kept our snow pants hanging in the hallway all winter.  Ask the folks out at the ‘Whitetail’ ski resort what they think about the last few seasons.  When you have to rely on making snow most of the winter months, that doesn’t bode well for a company’s profit margins (unless you charge $100 for a lift ticket and $7 for a cup of coffee, but hey, I digress).

Hoping for a White Christmas?  Good luck around here anymore, unless you are headed out west over Kayser’s Ridge – and if so, good luck, sailor because anything can happen on that mountaintop.  I swear it could snow up there on the 4^th of July.  Other than that, you’ll have an easier time finding a YouTube video of a beautiful country snowfall and playing it on your big screen TV.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and have a climate change debate, but I think we can all agree that the summers are hotter and the winters are milder, and that trend continues year after year.

That being said, I do love the change of seasons in our local area, and even though I’m not a fan of driving in it, I sure wouldn’t be offended if Jack Frost decided to drop a few inches of powdery-white, winter magic all over the countryside a few times over the next few months.

I’ve got a pair of snow pants in my closet that miss me.