“It’s been a winter like the old days,” folks are fond of saying when it gets really cold and we get a bit of snow.
I’ve been hearing about the weather of the old days for about 25 years. Before that, I lived in Southern California, where there’s no real weather to speak of. Well, there is a month or two of intermittent rain shouldering the new year, followed by varying degrees of hot the rest of the time. But other than the occasional monsoon season — which is the way El Niño affects that part of the world —there’s no real distinction between the weather of today and of yesteryear.
Things are different when you move to a place with a four-season climate and every weather event can be referenced against some extreme example from the past. When I moved to Montana in 1992, the old timers carried with them the assumption that one or two of those winters like the good old days would send softies such as myself scurrying back to where we came from.
They loved to tell me about the big dump of such-and-such a year, assuming I’d be at the U-Haul the next day. It only takes a brief glance around Western Montana to understand it didn’t quite work out like that.
This has been an old-fashioned winter so far. It has been silly cold, so much so that I’ve spent much of January contemplating scurrying back to where I came from. It may be the cold, or I suppose it could be age. Some lose their endurance for winter as they get older. If I start Googling doublewide prices in Quartzite, Ariz., I’m probably a lost cause.
Then maybe, all I have to do is wait for the climate of my yesteryear to find its way north. Despite the recent cold weather, the climate of the Northern Rockies is warming. Just think how great Glacier National Park will be with an extra month or so of summer every year. Well, we might have to rename the joint Glacierless National Park, but at least we’ll be able to wear cargo shorts to the ceremony unveiling the new signage.
Stuff happens when the climate changes, and not all of that stuff is positive. Certain species require the old-fashioned weather of decades past — lynx and their favorite prey, snowshoe hares, for example.
I happen to enjoy fly fishing for trout. Here’s the thing most fly fishers understand once they realize they want to live where trout live. It inevitably means living someplace with real winter as trout need cold clear water to live and breed, and to have that you need snowmelt that lingers well into the warm season.
Otherwise, you end up with bass. Not a bad fish, mind you, but if the day ever arrives when largemouth become the No. 1 gamefish in these parts, it won’t be cause for celebration.
Then there’s the news that tick infestations are wiping out moose in the northeastern U.S. The dirty buggers are so numerous they’re draining calves of blood faster than it can be replaced and the young ones die. The problem is a result, at least in part, of milder winters due to, you guessed it, a warming climate.
That’s probably not a dynamic that would play out for moose in the West. At least for now, our winters remain extreme enough to knock back tick populations, and our moose are not so numerous. But it is a reminder that a changing climate brings tradeoffs. Extending the flip-flop season inevitably means you further restrict the range of coldwater specialists such as bull trout.
We may joke about how nice it would be to golf in January in Montana, but frankly, golf in January is why God created Arizona. Winter is a part of Montana. If one reaches the point they can’t take it anymore, well, that’s why humans created Quartzite.