It's cold out there!

[EER]

Yeah, after some 20 C temperatures in december, a storm last week, now finally, it's freezing!

[Jonas]

Wow that's a beautiful picture. May I use it in TNM?

[EER]

It would be my honor

[Trestkon]

...Freezing?

*rants about 'real' cold*

(Very nice picture, though.)

[Flyboy]

EER, you live in Newfoundland?

[EER]

@Flyboy: Nope, I live in the Netherlands, you know, no? Amsterdam? Flowers? Weed? Ah, yeah, I knew you knew it

@Trestkon: Yeah, you canadians have all the snow, so I have to be satisfied with cold feet

Last year though:

[Jonas]

Actually we have snow up here too, it started Monday. Nothing like what they get in Canada though, the suckers.

[Trestkon]

Last year though:

Hehe, that's about 1/20th of the snow we have on the ground right now :-p

It's actually rather crazy how much snow we get...my city spends millions of dollars clearing the streets every winter.

[chris the cynic]

@@Trestkon: Yeah, you canadians have all the snow, so I have to be satisfied with cold feet

It was not always so. Once upon a time Maine voted in September (for all things but president) because of the snow.

2006 was the warmest year on record.
In September there was rain.
In October there was rain.
In November there was rain.
December had some snow, but more rain. The snow did not get a chance to accumulate.
This January didn't just break records, it broke them with huge margins with even the lows at record highs. Normally January is too cold for snow, but finally, after the rain stopped and the temperature dropped (lately the highs have been below freezing) we had some snow that stuck around, some is still here.

Ski Mountains aren't all that happy, were it not for artificial snow they wouldn't be able to open at all.

So, Canadians who have all the snow, stop hording it all.

[justanotherfan]

Its all melting though! I hate spring. No one ever wrote a poem about the brown mud slush slurry that coats everything in spring.

[Jonas]

Dude, January is not spring.

[chris the cynic]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the seasons still exist. They don't. The earth is still on an axis, yes, but there is more to a season than the amount of sunlight in a day. This (past) year there was no recognizable autumn here. Flowers came into bloom when the position of earth told us it was winter, migrations have been similarly screwed up.

If someone can look at their world and say, "It's spring," it bloody well is spring, position of the earth be damned.

-

Actually I don't really believe that, but other than the length of the day and the position of earth in its orbit the distinctions between seasons are becoming very hazy. Winter does tend to be colder, but not necessarily much, autumn is still when the leaves fall, but the flowers bloom whenever they want to, hatching seasons are wrong and the other indicators are just ... off.

[Jonas]

Far as I'm concerned, the seasons are a useful measure for dividing the year into quarters.

December -> February = Winter
March -> May = Spring
June -> August = Summer
September -> November = Autumn

Obviously Shane might object to that when he's sweating to death in the middle of January, what I call winter, but these are the definitions I go by

[Trestkon]

Only 3 months of Winter? That would make for a wussy cold season, indeed

[justanotherfan]

Spring is when the snow-mud melts and I have allergies. Summer is when I have allergies and everything is uncomfortable. Fall is when I have allergies because everything is dying and rotting. Winter is when all the crap is covered in clean snow. Anything that isn't good isn't winter.

You're right, it shouldn't ****ing be spring at 53? 34′ N in February. I have to research whether to move even further North, or move south if global warming will cause an ice age.