Unseasonable
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It is nearly sixty degrees out there and raining. It is enough to make me go back to bed, thinking of the water splashing off the cars and the long wait on the 14th Street Bridge going down to the office. And why go to the office, anyway? They survived perfectly well the three days I was either flat on my back or huddled in a ball. That is the problem with being sick. It saps the will, along with the good white cells. But if they get used to my not being there, perhaps they will begin to use my desk for something else, a place for coats, perhaps. So I stir and begin to move. I have had reports from across the country of the dry hack that follows this version of the flu, and of friends who had to go to the office regardless of how bad they felt. But that is behind. I steel myself for business, and lay out the suit of lights for the business day on the Murphy bed to go downtown. I assume will be another six weeks of winter. I did not get the live feed from Punxsuatawney, PA, but it was sunny and bright here, and that must have been true when they pulled the groundhog out of his cage and held him up to see his shadow. I don’t know why seeing a shadow or not could possibly be considered a reliable meteorological tool. But Groundhog Day, or Candlemass, for the sturdy Germans who moved into Western Pennsylvania, is rooted deep within us, and given the fact that winter never really has arrived yet, as good as any. The Old Ones called the festival halfway between the solstice and the equinox Imbolc, from the Celtic word for the lactation of the ewes, one of the first indications that Spring will return to northern Europe. The weather was harsher then, and there. In the current times, I think we might want to think of Imbolc as being halfway to the start of the next hurricane season. The poor buds are already started on the trees outside, and with six weeks to go with a reasonable risk of frost, they are dangerously forward. But that is happening all over the country. Flowers are blooming in Montana. Golfers are lining up to the hit courses in Maine, the sap is starting to run in Vermont, and Lake Erie is ice-free. The weather guessers are quick to remind us that it is unseasonably cold in Russia, the winter in Europe has been chilly. They say the current temperate weather is caused by a re-positioning of the jet stream, which is running due east across the North America, rather that twisting north and south across the continent as it normally does. I remember one year when it took its plunge south over Manitoba and speared us directly in the heart, week after disheartening week, here in Northern Virginia. This unseasonable west-to-east flow has essentially created a carrier against the cold, and permitted the gentle breezes of the tropics to tease us with early hopes of Spring. They say this is going to end, and the river of the atmosphere will coil up like an anaconda once more, and the seasonably cold weather will be back. But I searched to see what had happened on Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney at 7:23 yesterday morning. It was overcast, but the big rodent saw his shadow. It was a near thing, but it looks like the jet stream is going to change, and we have six weeks of winter to go. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |
