Reverse Psychology And Weather Systems

As far as I can tell from the Stuff and NZ Herald websites, it’s been so wet in New Zealand that you should all be thinking of ark-building. Sounds like business as usual for a New Zealand summer, then. Massachusetts, however, is having a most unusual winter – insomuch as it’s a winter at all.

You might remember that back in October it looked like this outside in Western Massachusetts (and large stretches of the Northeast):

Admittedly it didn't still look like this the afternoon of the day I took this picture, but two feet of snow did fall.

Well, it’s the first week of January – the coldest part of the year, normally, and by “coldest” I mean “generally doesn’t get above freezing for weeks at a time” – and not only does it not look like it did this time last year…

So technically this picture is from early February, but trust me when I say it's a good approximation.

…it looks like this.

Really. Like this. The blue sky isn't even cunningly deceptive. Some days have been actually genuinely warm.

There has been one day this winter when it has failed to climb above freezing. The lowest low has been about -13C. Last year it was around -30C. I’m still biking to university – no ice, no snow, and as long as it’s -5C or above it’s a perfectly pleasant ride. Nor is it just Massachusetts; high-temperature records are falling all over America, and ski resorts are barely keeping the slopes open, so little snow has fallen. Admittedly, there’s still a good three months left to go of potential winter weather, so panic is not yet due, but compared to last year’s record snowfall it’s bizarre.

It isn’t even that snow is falling and then melting; it isn’t falling at all. When it precipitates, it rains. This is somewhat vexing in that the great swath of newly-dumped dirt outside our front door which got trekked muddily into our house all autumn, instead of freezing and then being snowed over, is bringing forward the anticipated spring mud by about four months. Except without the possibility of grass growing on it. It’s like eternal late November. Thanksgiving aside, I’m not so thrilled with late November when it is late November. Late November all winter seems a bit much.

There’s also the bit when it is below -5C and I go to put my bike on the bus at the main road and discover the pull-down bike racks have frozen to the bus, which is not so much fun and especially not so much fun when it’s winter break and the buses are on the reduced forty-minute schedule. I could take a can of CRC (WD-40 to Americans) with me, but a) I’m not sure it’d work and b) I’m not sure how the bus people would feel about me oiling their racks. (And that doesn’t sound weirdly euphemistic at all. Right.)

Mostly, everyone has the thoroughly illogical but nevertheless creeping feeling that sooner or later we’re going to get a whole winter’s worth of snow all at once. I have an abstract due to a conference at the end of January and more than one experiment to do before I hand it in; if the snow could hold off until then, that would be brilliant. You hear me, weather? NO SNOW. NONE.

(Reverse psychology works on continental weather systems, right?)