… it was the most miserable, relentless winter, ever! Remember that?

Our memories are amazingly short and I suppose it’s a human survival strategy to focus so intently on the conditions that are right in front of us that we assume it has always been, and will always be so. At least it feels that way, and that’s why I am always ready to complain.

Summer 2011 is an endless sauna. I have had it with heat and humidity. Really, it’s exhausting.

Last February, snowstorms were lined up from here to Montana, each waiting for its chance to fill my driveway with another three feet of snow. Just like now – exhausting. I thought I would never feel warm again.

Alas, it all changes and you can be sure that six months from today I’ll use the arrival of yet another cold front to wistfully recall how gorgeous it is to go for a walk on a summer night. At dusk a day in July feels perfectly suited to human habitation. This is how we were meant to live – in shorts and sandals, our hands and heads uncovered, our feet and toes exposed to the fragrant air.

Except on THIS particular July night, I’m closed up inside my air conditioned box, not at all inclined to go out. Instead I’m thinking about how cozy it would feel to be decorating the Christmas tree while alarmist weather-folk warn us to stay off the roads. I’d sip a hot toddy and gaze out the window, safe and warm while a holly jolly snow decorates the yard.

I guess conditions are never quite ideal, except in some far-off, half-recalled, make-believe time.

Perpetual Summer or Endless Winter – which would you choose?

The scale of the tornado strikes across the south is breathtaking, and I know we are all deeply sympathetic to the families who have experienced terrible losses. Even for a people familiar with cyclones it is unthinkable to picture a mile-wide funnel bearing down on your town.

I’ve lived several places in the Midwest, and in each one I was given the assurance by the locals that “they call this area ‘Tornado Alley’.” I’m a coward when it comes to physical danger, but for the benefit of my New York friends and relatives I would adopt an air of brave resignation about the possibility of having to face a line of twisters.

“Yes, it is very dangerous out on the open prairie. Trouble could reach from the clouds at any moment. We wait and watch.”

This is an easy pose to adopt when, like me, you have never actually seen a tornado.

Dorothy Gale’s stoic Kansas farm family has long been the model – if a tornado comes straight for the house you stop your work long enough to get into the cellar, then come out to pick up the pieces. If you get caught above ground, ride it out in the house, but keep a window open so you can watch the scenery fly past. If it catches you on your bike, keep pedaling. We may have to call the doctor if you get a bump on the head, and we’ll all stand around squeezing our hankies until you come around, but then it will be time to finish the chores.

Nonsense, all of it.

What happened in Mississippi and Alabama is the stark reality of the mega-storm. There’s nowhere to run and not many good options. Let’s hope this is not the “new normal” for springtime weather. And as for sudden natural disasters, it’s becoming clear that no one has cornered the market. It seems like every place on the globe has it’s own special flavor of impending calamity.

We even managed to come up with an earthquake in Minnesota yesterday. To be exact, the 2.5 magnitude temblor was centered on the southwestern edge of Alexandria, near the airport, at about 2:20 am. There was no damage reported aside from the emotional distress of those who found themselves too excited about the royal wedding to go back to sleep.

An earthquake is far from a typical Minnesota experience. Paul Walsh wrote in the Star Tribune that other earthquakes have hit the state in 1975, 1981 and 1994. Adding the one in Alexandria yesterday, there have now been as many Minnesota centered earthquakes as there have been Vikings Super Bowl appearances, and all with no lasting effect.

I guess we can be grateful for that. It becomes increasingly apparent that we have nothing to complain about.

Resolved: I’ll drop the tornado martyrdom from here on out, and will try to resist any temptation to tell people from far away that Minnesota “is in an active seismic zone”. But it will require a major psychological shift to end my pitiful wailing whenever we get even a little bit of cold winter weather. Thank goodness we will always have a legitimate gripe when it comes to the Vikings.

Later in the day in Thursday’s comments, Renee spoke for many when she said:

Two things come to mind:

1) Trail Baboon is based in Minnesota so the weather is exempt from being categorized as “Off Topic”. It is always on our minds.

2) Renee is right, but check the date. Our five day forecast must be an unfunny practical joke.

Whatever happened to the gentle sound of this benevolent saying – April Showers Bring May Flowers? I believe it originated long ago in a place where they get an earlier spring.

Perhaps we need something more realistic.

April Blizzards
Freeze Our Gizzards.

April Drifting
Heavy Lifting.

April Sleeting
Strength’s Depleting.

April Plowing
Furrowed Browing.

April Icing
Ain’t Enticing.

April Sliding
I’m in hiding.

April Snowing
South I’m Going.

What is your favorite (true) saying?

Wooly Mammoths Unearthed

Our monumental weekend snowstorm continues to deliver amazing discoveries. Impatient amateur archeologists are excitingly trumpeting the news that an out of work plumber claims to have uncovered the remains two wooly mammoths in the enormous pile of snow at the end of his suburban driveway.

“My shovel hit something,” said Barry Tukeman, “and I thought it was another filthy ice chunk kicked up by the plow. But when the snow fell away, I could see tusks.”

The mammoths are remarkably well preserved and fully intact, with two tusks each.

Tukeman, an instant paleontologist who has studied the science extensively on Wikipedia, theorizes that the animals became encased in ice during Saturday’s particularly vicious blizzard and expired standing up. He dated the find at a full 3 days ago.

“Saturday night the snow was blowing so hard sideways I don’t think I woulda seen the Titanic if it had come crashing into my front yard,” Tukeman remarked. “In fact, the Titanic might still be out there. I haven’t cleared the front walk yet.”

No one in the area recalls seeing the creatures before the storm hit, and many of Tukeman’s neighbors were skeptical that the mammoths wandered in by accident.

“His lawn was an eyesore last summer, that’s for sure,” said Sara Tonin, who lives two doors away from Tukeman. “My children claimed they heard strange rustlings and snorting when they passed by his place, so it’s not farfetched to think that he already had a Wooly Mammoth infestation going on. We couldn’t take legal action, but if I find any evidence that things with tusks have been digging in my garden this spring, he’s paying for the pesticide treatment.”

Dr. Dima Hannibal, an expert in wooly mammoth research in the Cryptozoology Department at the University of Proboscis at Durante, received images of the discovery by e-mail yesterday afternoon. Her immediate comment was, “You’re kidding, right?”

She was reacting to photographic evidence that the creatures are not wooly, nor especially large.

“They look like plastic children’s toys, and elephants at that. Not even related to the Wooly Mammoth. If they were biological creatures in the first place, which they’re not.”

Pressed on the likelihood of migratory, non-living plastic mammoths getting lost in this past weekend’s storm and winding up encased at the end of a driveway in Woodbury, Dr. Hannibal called the explanation a hoax, and not a very good one at that.

“My guess is that a child dropped some toys in the yard and didn’t pick them up. This find might date back to sometime last summer. But I wouldn’t go much further than that.”

What lost childhood toy would you most like to recover?