This winter has been cold. Not just chilly, it’s so cold that even the Michigan natives are complaining. It’s so cold and snowy that the locals are reaching back 35 years into their collective memory to find weather and storms to compare it to. I saw an article today about how it’s just been a really long time since we had weather this cold, and when you look back more than 15 or 17 years this would be considered normal.
I don’t care. I didn’t grow up here, I never really wanted to live here, and this is not normal for me. This is insane. I grew up in a place where a single snowflake was a cause for panic or elation, depending on your inclination. I grew up in a place where we broke out jackets with temperatures in the 70’s, and full winter ski coats in the 60’s. Having to live with feet of snow and temperatures at or below ZERO DEGREES FAHRENHEIT is not normal to me. It’s horrifying. I don’t like it, I will never like it, and if this is what “normal” looks like up here, it has just renewed my determination to find a way to move back to where the weather is my kind of “normal” as soon as possible.
The world around me looks like something I used to only see for a week at a time, visiting ski resorts. Now I am living in it, shoveling it, insulating against it, day in and day out for weeks on end. It feels like it never will end, like we’re stuck in George R. R. Martin’s idea of winter.
Enough complaining. Here’s some pictures to give my friends back home an idea of just what it’s like up here this winter:
Winter is Coming. Apparently so is Fimbulvinter.