Just how cold does it need to get in a well-known place?

I saw it on the sign in front of the East Great Plains Fire Department yesterday morning where the New London Turnpike intersects with Route 82, just two, brave words, "Welcome Spring". That I was wearing my winter jacket, and had both the seat heater and the car heater on added, just slightly, to the irony of the greeting.

This time last week, when it was still winter, it was a lot warmer around here and all we could talk about was how nice it was going to be when 'spring finally gets here.' Seems talking about items in advance, in anticipation, can sometimes not be such a good idea. Praising the day before the evening has arrived can be risky, and not just in matters of weather, though that's what I'm talking about right now. I had already started wearing my lighter than winter jacket when my wife and I went out for a bit last Sunday and almost froze our keisters off.

People can be a lot like goldfish--we forget that times change and situations improve. Because it's been a slow spring so far, we fear spring may never get here at all. And then we'll watch someone on the weather report tonight who'll remind us about the Blizzard of '78 where it snowed for forty days and forty nights after Easter and destroyed all known civilization on the Eastern Seaboard and we'll brighten up a bit and say 'well, it's not that bad now, so it'll all work out.'

When it gets to 100 plus degrees in August or July or September (I'm not sure when it will happen, exactly, just that it will-because it always does) we'll look back with nostalgia and a bit of regret to the days we are having right now. We'll tell one another about the time the rivers froze and the birds were hanged in mid-air, suspended by their own breath in the sky. And then it got really cold......
-bill kenny