It’s warm for February, a meteorological island where I don’t even need to put on a jacket before going out. The weather’s been brutally cold, and we’ve even had an unusual amount of snow, so this sudden spike, while nice for those of us who tend to be more cold-blooded, is also unsettling. February shouldn’t feel like May, though the coming May will probably, at least at times, feel like August, when it really should feel more like September. It’s even possible that May will feel like February, which will be even worse.
There were times like this when I was a kid, brief warm spells in the middle of winter, the bare trees and beige spiky grass contrasting sharply with the ambient warmth. My parents insisted I still go out wearing at least a jacket. It was still winter, after all. That’s what the calendar said and that mattered more than the thermometer. At any moment the heat could break, like a fever, like the time my own temperature spiked and I stayed in bed all day, shivering even as my body burned,a thick quilt pulled up to my forehead, and hours swirled away into a dark funnel. And the heat did break, eventually, cold rushing back into the world the way it did on those late nights when I’d open my window to listen to the darkness.
The sky then was always cloudy when it was warm, another disjunction. The sky looked like winter even if the ground didn’t feel like it. It’s cloudy now, too, the flat dull gray of cold weather, of a sky that doesn’t have the energy to do anything but spread itself out and close its eyes.
This afternoon, though, there was a change. The clouds curled up, still swaddling the sun but there was an azure expanse overhead. And off in the distance there was the faintest rainbow, barely together, a block of the spectrum against a flat backdrop of ash.
I’m not sure how to feel about this. We have words for how the winter cold makes us feel, and the summer heat, but a warm February has me tongue-tied. How should I feel? I ask the sky as though I need some external guidance, something to tell me what it means. But I know what it means. The world is in flux, in motion, and things will change even as I am, for the moment, frozen.
The warm weather in February is unnerving. It’s also disruptive. I like to sleep cold, and last night, it was a little stuffy – but not enough to put the ceiling fan on – but stuffy enough that I woke up in a sweat several times, then threw off the covers til I was clammy, and then repeat.
It’s the lightning and thunder this time of year that I find the weirdest. Evening storms are for spring, summer and maybe a brief window in fall. But not February.
The evening storms were something I realized I’d left out after I posted this. Thunderstorms are scary enough in summer but at least they’re somewhat predictable. A warm spell in the winter may or may not come with a storm but when it does I find it really unnerving. And I prefer the warm weather myself but, damn it, when it’s winter I want it to be cold.
We’re buried under mountains of snow right now. Time to get up and try to drive to work when I just want to stay buried under blankets😊
Since that warm spell we’ve had some intense cold and even enough snow to shut things down, at least for a day. Winter weather has gotten entirely too weird.
I don’t have the words to express how beautifully written this blog post is, Chris. Many thanks for all of it.