Stormy Weather

Forward Into Spring
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/opinion/17WED4.html?th
Published: March 17, 2004

It doesn't take much of a snowstorm in the middle weeks of March to remind inveterate weather watchers of the great March snowstorms of the past. Particularly — for those of us in the Northeast — the blizzard of 1888 and the superstorm of 1993. The 1888 blizzard, which killed some 400 people across the region, is now part of our meteorological ancestry, the kind of event that has continued to grow in stature even though the last witnesses are long gone. A blizzard will probably never be able to sneak up on us again the way that one did. We now have the luxury of seeing what's coming, watching open-mouthed as an event like the March 1993 storm develops. That one, as many of us remember, cut through 26 states and killed some 270 people.

But the cruelty of a mid-March storm, even the modest kind that hit yesterday, is usually psychological. There have already been a few days of springlike warmth. Dawn shows behind the hills or beyond the skyline by 5:30, and twilight lingers till well past 6. Most of us have shifted out of our dire winter coats. The first flocks of robins are back on the ground, and in the country red-winged blackbirds can be heard in the marshes. Everything is tipping in one direction. And then it snows again. No one is responsible. But it feels like a kind of distributive injustice. There are parts of the world that really need this precipitation. Let them have it.

Comments

[Rose]

It might have something to do with the greenhouse effect... At least, in parts of the world that's a possibility.

[Jack]

This is why I am taking my family to Puerto Rico in two weeks during my son's spring break. I NEED WARM. It's pschological thing, as you say. Hmm, I wonder if I can write the trip off my taxes as a medical expense.