Sunshine on the horizon

My friend Debra, who lives on a Hutterite colony near the Canadian border, called me on the last night of my Florida vacation.

She wanted to know when Barb and I were coming home.

“Bring me some warm weather,” she said. “It’s been very cold and the wind’s bitter.”

Debra comes from sturdy stock and seldom complains about the weather so I knew it must be miserable up there, a place her mother calls “out here and gone.”

I told her we were leaving in the morning and I’d see what I could do.

The wind was rustling the palms and I could hear the breaking surf at first light when I loaded the truck at my cousin’s house in New Smyrna

Beach. It was 61 degrees when we headed north.

That was the warmest temperature we saw all day. By the time we reached Jacksonville it was 59 and when I stopped to fill up the truck a couple of hours later in Georgia the mercury had dropped to 53.

When we crossed the Smoky Mountains north of Chattanooga, Tenn., it was spitting snow. The radio was tuned to a country station and that song with the line “Sunny and 75,” was playing.

That’s a popular refrain this winter, which has been a difficult one for folks from one end of the country to the other, even in Montana where winter seldom surprises us.

Snowpack in the mountains is way above average and still building. There has already been flooding in Livingston and Manhattan, and avalanches killed a number of folks in the past couple months.

The forecast calls for warming temps by the weekend, but I’ve noticed a pattern this winter – the weather’s seldom as nice as predicted once it arrives. Spring remains elusive, seeming to always be hovering just out of reach.

My friend David, who’s watching our house in Malta, told me a few weeks ago that the snow there had melted. However, when I talked to him yesterday, he told me winter had returned. The yard was covered with snow, he said, but fortunately the winter’s accumulation of dog poop, which emerged with the thaw, had once again disappeared under a sterile cover of white.

I hope it’s melted by the time we get back. It will make it easier to clean the yard.

And while I can’t promise Debra we’ll bring her warmer weather, I can offer her some hope. Sunny and 75 is only two or three months away.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]