Wonderful, weird winter weather
Mild temps have been great, but they seem out of place in Grundy County
Comments (...)Have you ever heard stories from our elders about long-ago winters, when temperatures would regularly be cold enough to freeze water and snowfalls were measured by the foot?
How hard life must have been way back when — like in, say, 2010-11. I’m sure glad we don’t have to endure anything like that in modern times.
On Monday, I was stuck in the office from early in the morning until late in the afternoon, as is customary on Mondays. People had filtered in and out of the building, of course; several remarked about what a nice day it was outside. In my mind, it meant that the conditions outdoors were probably similar to what used to pass for a “nice” January day in north-central Illinois. In other words, it wasn’t snowing, wasn’t sleeting and the temperature wasn’t close to hitting absolute zero.
Silly me. I forgot that this is the winter of 2011-12. To qualify as a nice January day this year, it’s got to be sunny — that partly cloudy stuff just doesn’t cut it anymore — and it’s got to be almost warm enough out to go swimming. I may be exaggerating just a bit, of course ... but when the temps soared into the mid 50s this week, we were every bit as close to beach weather as we were to being able to ice skate safely on local ponds.
WGN weatherman Tom Skilling recently told Twitter that this has been the mildest in Chicago in 78 years. He sent that tweet out on Jan. 25 — almost a week BEFORE temps went from unseasonably mild to borderline tropical on Monday. If we keep this up, not only will we shatter our own record for highest recorded average winter temperature, we’ll break Miami’s as well.
As someone who has an internal “why in the heck do I live here?” discussion with himself around this time every year, I must say that this winter has been pretty awesome. I only like snow and cold if I’m looking to ski, which you can’t exactly do around here anyway. Specifically, the great weather has made my life better in these ways:
• I shared in a column that ran in October that I had gotten into running. The good (and perhaps surprising) news is that I’ve stuck with it ever since. I was worried that when winter came, and the weather trapped me indoors, I’d slack off. (We do have a treadmill that my in-laws generously donated to the Keep Mark in Shape Fund a couple of years ago, but I’m not a fan of running on treadmills if I can help it). Luckily, I’ve been able to keep running regularly outside. It’s occasionally required me to suck it up and run when the temps are in the teens, but I’ve been able to get out at least a couple of times a week and get in a couple of miles without massive drifts or large patches of ice blocking my path.
• We recently celebrated the milestone fifth birthday of our famous-in-this-column mutt, Mimi. As Mimi nears middle age in doggie years, she is turning into more and more of a whimp. Try to prod her to step outside long enough to do her business when there’s snow on the ground, and she’ll respond with whining and by straining to get back inside. We haven’t had to fight the world’s most spoiled dog to go make yellow snow very often this year since there’s rarely been any snow for her to color.
• I don’t drive from one corner of greater Grundy County to the other on a daily basis the way I did when I was a full-time sports writer for the Herald. Now, on a typical day, I drive to the office in the morning and back home to Seneca when the day is done. And since she graduated in December, Amber hasn’t had to drive to Kankakee several times a week to go to school like she used to. Still, I know neither of us minds that the driving conditions have so often been perfect when we have had to commute. I’d say they’re actually better than they usually are in the summer — no farm machinery is out, and Old Stage Road is actually open.
• I like grilling out, but I like it a lot more on warm summer days than on cold winter nights. During a normal winter, I’ll brave the elements a couple of times and cook on the patio, but most of the food preparation gets done indoors. This winter, and especially this week, grilling hasn’t been much tougher than it would be in June.
• For the most part, I could get out and get honey-do chores and projects done outside and in the garage without any major snow- or cold-related issues. And I would have if all of those pesky football games weren’t on all the time, forcing me to stay near the television.
In summation, this winter has been everything I could ever realistically hope for from a winter in this area. So why do I feel kind of bad, almost guilty, about it? Am I afraid of global warming, and that weather this warm is a signal that it’s real and it’s here? Do I think that karma will catch up to us 12 months from now, when we’ll buried under 4 feet of snow in the wake of three solid weeks of sub-zero temperatures?
All I know is something just doesn’t seem right about it being 55 degrees on Jan. 31 in Morris. Something didn’t seem right when we didn’t have a white Thanksgiving or a white Christmas ... and when virtually all of the snow we’ve gotten since has melted away. Something didn’t seem right when I called my Grandpa at his Comstock, Minn. home at Christmastime and he said there was virtually no snow on the ground and temps in the high 30s (Comstock is just minutes from the tropical paradise known as Fargo, N.D.).
I hate winter weather ... and now that we’ve managed to avoid (for now) the worst of it, I feel funny about it. Maybe I’m just impossible to please. But the phrase “good January weather in northern Illinois” has an oxymoronic quality to it. Can three feet of snow get dumped on us in mid February so everything feels normal again?
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