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Monday, April 18, 2011

OFFICIAL COMPLAINT ABOUT THE WEATHER?


Well not really, whining never improves things and complaining about the weather is one of the most useless energy drains I know of. So instead I will give observations. This is the coldest and wettest Spring I can remember in Central Oregon, that would be the last 37 years. One thing that is different now is the weather forecasts are much more accurate than even 10 years ago. It seems when it says it is going to rain or be cold it does it. In a practical sense what this does is make us more miserable because people not only complain about today's weather they complain about the weather to come. We have always had cold springs but we also had hope for warmer days ahead. Today we can see on our phones, our Ipads, our computers and the newspaper that the weather will continue to be cold and wet for the next 10 days (actually on the day I am writing this it will be cool but dry). No hope in other words.
Here is the good news. It should have been colder and wetter this year. Most people know about La Nina and El Nino. This is when the Pacific is either warmer or colder than average. As a side I wonder if the Pacific is ever average? This year was La Nina and that means cool and wet. However it was a very strong La Nina and most climatologists were predicting wetter than it has been. So we got off easy. La Nina has pretty much gone away so in a a few weeks the weather should improve.
Most of us complain about the weather because they can't do the things they want to do. Sunbathe, ski, ride bikes, play golf and in Kathy's case garden. I happen to be in the bike riding school of whining. I don't whine though. Instead I ride my mountain bike. In Central Oregon Mountain Bike riding is enhanced by wet. The snow seems to be melting so I go out and enjoy what we have. Nice sticky wet trails. I raced in the thick mud last week and happened to win my race. This was because I love the mud. So the weather was my friend.
One disclaimer. I go to Spain every Spring for a real taste of Spring, flowers blooming, ripe oranges hanging on trees and days of sunshine. I know when I come back it will be cool and wet but at least I have tasted what most Central Oregonians are missing.
Instead of whining go out and do the things that our weather is good for, Spring skiing, Mountain Biking and maybe a trip to someplace warmer would be a good thing.
Don

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hey, it's not so bad for gardening, as long as there are big jobs like pruning and digging to be done. It's the softy bits -- putting out tender flowers -- that we have been missing.