Winters of Yore

I remember in the past, I REMEMBER the past, growing up in the boonies we had a lot of snow every year.  I remember that it was a physical workout going to the neighbour's house because the snow was so deep and snow pants were required.  The neighbour's house was less than one hundred meters away and I would be talking about new snow, the path to their house would have to be 'broken in' more than once a week sometimes.  We always looked forward to the January Thaw, which usually happened every year.  The sun would be out and short sleeves would not come out, but we would look at them wistfully.   and a little bit of the snow would melt.  Usually around the edges, on the trees, along the roads and on the top.  It would not last long but it would be a great break from minus twenty.  

The best part was that when it was over in a couple of days and the temperature drops back down to normal temperatures like -20°C, the melted wet snow on the surface would freeze solid and traveling the space between houses got fun, trying to balance on top of the snow, speeding the travel time considerably and proving that you did not weigh a thing.

But today, the second day of the January Thaw of 2013, it is all wrong.  Instead of a a day of melt after two months of snow, it is a week of thaw after two weeks of snow.  It is expected to rain in a couple of days, 10-15mm, a downpour in the winter.  In a regular winter of yore, that would have been a dumping of 10-30cm of snow, but no longer.  Will the lake freeze this year?  

Smallville is a tourist town and traditionally there were two tourist times Summer and Winter.  Summertime the source is obvious, cottages coming to the lakes and city people coming for the day or the week.  In the Wintertime they would be coming to ski cross country, snowmobile across the trails and fish in the ice fishing derbies.  Lately the winter tourism has been hit hard.  There have been years where the snowmobile trials have not opened up or opened late.  The bay that skimmed over in December and froze deep enough to drive on by early January, now might not freeze over at all.  This prolonged thaw, with rain, is a bad sign.

Not many people realize that the Great Lakes, used to freeze over regularly.  Well some of them froze over almost every year and some almost never.  Lake Ontario froze over only three times in recorded history.  Lake Superior almost every year before recent times.

Now we are hearing that things are bad in the Australian Summer, where they have had to add temperature gradients to their temperature maps to show temperatures over 50°C.  And over 54°C.  The optimist in me says that this is a great time for Green Energy in Australia, think of all that solar power that they can generate.  Here is another benefit for the Australians, every bit of solar energy converted into power is sunlight not heating the ground.

That does not help people around here.  Unless we use all Australia's green energy to refrigerate the air and use the heat from the refrigeration to heat the homes and stop other heating methods that are adding to the problem.  Yes I know, a silly idea!