Wednesday, February 11, 2009

This is too early...

I don't like the cold. Winter has it's highlights, but warmer weather is much more my cup of tea. If you live in the Centre of the Universe (southern Ontario), you'll notice that the weather is not very wintery. In fact, it's spring-like. In early February.

The weather outside is currently hovering around the 9 degrees C mark, and is supposed to stay within range for the next few days. Even the long-term forecast has the average daily high sitting around zero.

It's nice. Warmer weather is great, but there is no real net benefit out of this weather. It could simply be a tease, leading us to go outside in sweaters and see everyone's mangled lawns, only to be dumped on by piles of snow and bitten by a harsh freeze (harsh relative to southern Ontario).

If it's not a tease, then we probably have a bigger problem on our hand. That ol' climate change thing could be looking us straight in the eye. Sure, weather has cyclical patterns and has done stuff like this before, but it's a frightening thought nonetheless.

Other parts of Canada have been experiencing some bizarre weather as of late as well. You might remember the snowfall that hit B.C. and Washington, eventually resulting in massive flooding.

And the past few days in Winnipeg have turned Manitoba upside down. In an ironic twist of fate, the region known for its resilience to cold has been shut down by unusually warm weather, complemented by freezing rain that has turned the province into Canada's largest skating rink (seriously, skating is now most efficient form of highway travel).

Again, I'm not completely chalking it up to climate change, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's playing a part. We can only hope Mother Nature is playing around with us. Otherwise, we're in a heap of trouble.

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