I don’t know how the weather is where you are, but where I am, it’s been shorts weather.
People who know me well know that I’m prone to pushing the limits of shorts weather well past the time most folks have given up dungarees cutoff abruptly above the knees. I might sport a stocking cap, a puffy coat, jorts, and my favorite winter wear, socks with sandals, this time of year.
This weekend’s wardrobe was not the result of atrocious fashion choices, but a weather-related adjustment on my spring running outfit. It was hot and sunny this weekend, almost hot enough to take my shirt off, if I was 20 pounds lighter. What was odd was that the sandhill cranes arrived en masse on the same weekend, and crane watchers are usually bundled up in winter clothing when they search for these early birds.
By the way, as bad as my fashion sense may be, you’ll never find me traipsing about in public, searching for cranes while wearing jorts with socks and Crocs. I have my limits.
As far as the weather goes, who’s to complain? I’ve no affection for winter and I rejoice with the best of them when shorts weather does arrive — whether I’m in the Rockies or the Great Plains or the Desert Southwest.
The odd thing about this warm weather is that I don’t feel like I earned it. We’ve only had a dusting or two of light snow; less than 3 inches for the season is my unofficial guess. I know this much for certain: both times there was enough snow on the ground to bother, I cleared it with a push broom.
A mild winter is a blessing, so long as it remains winter. By spring, however, we’ll be living with the consequences of a shirt-sleeve winter. And this summer, when fires in the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies rage, the western half of the country will take in a heavy dose of smoke from forests destroyed by the inferno, with every breath.
You want more “good” news? The La Niña conditions we hoped would deliver extra snow this winter, didn’t, and La Niña is fading quickly. Now, conditions in the eastern equatorial Pacific look promising for not just an El Niño next winter, but possibly a super-duper, extra-intense El Niño. And El Niño normally means a dry winter in the northern tier of the country.
I recall sitting out on the deck at a friend’s place a long time ago in Flagstaff, Arizona. Another lifetime. We had a good view of the ponderosa pine forest that climbs up from town toward the San Francisco Peaks. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, not unlike the other day when I went for a run in shorts. It was a fine day for sipping beer and enjoying the beauty of place.
I can’t remember what led us there, but the conversation drifted to the serious: weather patterns especially, climate change, and also, whether we and our families (he also had twin daughters) were destined to remain in Flagstaff or someday move on. This question of staying or going steered the conversation in a darker direction.
“This place is beautiful,” he said. “But I’m not sure it will be so beautiful in 25 or 30 years. This forest is amazing, but this could be piñon-juniper country by then.”
Maybe not by then, which would be now, and even if fire had already taken out that ponderosa pine forest, it’s too soon for anything to have replaced it. And probably, for now, the area around Flagstaff is still ponderosa country. But it won’t be forever if we stay on the trajectory we’re following right now.
My suggestion: make the most of this unseasonable winter. Smoke-filled skies all summer long used to be a rarity, but the gray pallor of fire season will soon be upon us.