It is supposed to be spring but it is quite wintery. This is the time of the year that we get heavy wet snows. Large air masses of warm, wet air battle large masses of cold dry air. Storms and snowfall result.
This is from 2011:
FRIDAY, MAY 6, 2011
It really hurts
It hurts more than you might think. In Wisconsin, there has been a long winter. Not as bad as some used to be. When we moved here, we experienced -30° and colder. But this year's was long, cold, dreary and limiting because of icy roads and walkways. We know that March 21 is supposed to be the first day of spring so by the middle of March, we are thinking of robins, leaves on trees and daffodils. But we don't get them until long after the vernal equinox.
I learned as a child that March was windy and April rainy, that such weather brought flowers. We thought of May Day, the first of May as truly spring. However, as noted in the musical Carousel, it is June that busts out all over in New England and here. So, for the last weeks of March, all of April and May, we are hoping for warmth and blue skies. That is a 10 week period or about 20% of the year. Given that the weather is often cold again in October through the end of the year, that long, often fruitless, wait during the calendar spring for the meteorological spring is frustrating.
This year, we ask where is the good stuff? When will we get some? Then, on top of the usual deprived spring, this year we get a week or two of quite depressing and nasty weather that is even worse than usual. We had snow all day on May 3rd! We don't like it. We don't appreciate it. We feel assaulted. When we hoped for at least a day with no cold wind and some sun, to get snow, even very light snow, really hurts.
I was out on a walk in a grumpy mood when friends drove up along side. The driver lowered his window and called out,"We're going to Miami. Want to go? Hop in." They were really headed for a store just over the hill but the sentiment and the image of not continuing to put up with being cheated, being assaulted, lifted my spirit. I must have talked to three or four other neighbors on that walk and everyone of them was snarling about snow. We all agreed we should not be experiencing it now. When we get the idea or even a direct statement by our favorite weatherman that a little warmth is on its way, it is painful to have air masses and jet streams guide the treasures we hoped for somewhere else.
Our cold air and foul weather may have protected us from the terrible tornado damage experienced in the South to some extent. We did have more than a dozen tornadoes a few weeks ago, some north of us and some to our south. But we are sick of poor weather, sick of being taunted by 30 minutes of sunlight every few days, sick of our winter wardrobes, which we have been wearing since September.
