Loss of tone
It is common custom in the North Country, when meeting folks from other northern climes, to have a--shall we say--writing-your-name-in-the-snow contest about who has it the worst. But this run of warm Decembers is eroding our credibility. What happened to those regular autumn blizzards that contributed so much to our imagined moral fiber? Why are the geese still hanging around? Winter is supposed to be endless and unendurable, brutal to the point of weeping. That's why we feel so deserving of our practice sessions in heaven, packing up head colds and rheumatism to flaunt cadaverous winter paunches on the beaches of the southlands. If winter is merely miserable, then this snowbirding is merely self-indulgent. If we could just have a few weeks where the temperature never rises above zero, and you need a purple tennis ball on the aerial to find your car, that would be all it would take to get us back into smug shape. "Ha--you call that winter? Let me tell you about winter..."
posted by Dale Hobson @ 12:07 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
As a North Country Native (born in Saranac Lake, raised in Malone) I laugh whenever people out (suburban Chicago) here complain about the winterweather. The average lows in the North Country are generally lower than the average lows out here. Also the North Country generally gets more snow than the Chicago metro area.
That being said, Chicagoland (the entire Chicago metro area) has the North Country beat hands down when it comes to weather extremity... That is to say the difference between the hottest day of summer and the coldest day of winter is generally greater in Chicago than it is in the North Country. In a given year the coldest winter day could be a negative 5 Fahrenheit (usually negative 15 with the wind chill) with the hottest summer day in that same given year topping out over 100 (with the heat index putting it at about 110).
Oh and given the general lack of topography (see also "flatter than a pancake") it is generally much windier out here too so the wind chill tends to have a greater impact on the cold here (or at least makes one more apt to notice the effect)... but when it's already negative twenty in the North country a 5 or 10 degree drop due to wind chill is really splitting hairs.
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