I tried avoiding it for the longest time, turning on the heat in my house, but I've finally given in after the house became cool enough for wool socks and two sweaters.
Summer didn't seem quite long enough with winter lasting into spring and the cold coming already in September. The other day I was standing outside and it felt like a cool October morning.
The Old Farmer's Almanac is predicting below-average temperatures again this winter with greater than normal snowfall, which means we should be enjoying any bit of warmth we can. Even if it feels like October a month early.
The Farmer's Almanac looks like we'll be tying down for a long, cold winter with a lot of snow. But if the Almanac is to be trusted we'll at least get a hot summer next year and should be prepared for rainfall.
For the most part the Farmer's Almanac is usually fairly accurate. Someone from back home used to be even more accurate, he has since passed, but he used to raise free range pigs and by, I think it was, chewing on the spleen could provide an accurate forecast. It sounds odd, but he was extremely accurate.
With an 80 percent success rate the Farmer's Almanac has been published for 223 years, which seems to me if it didn't know what it was talking about it wouldn't be around for that long.
Yet in a province where the weekly forecast changes each day, it's hard to really trust any of the predictions for the weather.
Ultimately people are following trends and cycles to attempt to predict what will happen next. For those climatologists expecting to be able to tell us a weekly forecast, they're looking at what satellites are showing for one day and using programs to predict what the weather will do based on wind movement, humidity, etc... all from the day they check it. These patterns they try to predict, but there are always anomalies which aren't accounted for leaving an ever changing forecast.
I personally try not to complain about the winters, but every once and awhile it's hard not to. Even just expecting another one with temperatures dipping into the -40s and -50s on occasion with lots of snow, I'm just not that excited for that prediction though.
I always rue the day of turning on the heating, but once it's turned on I begin to get excited for the winter, although this year it does seem too soon.
It even snowed in Alberta and the southwest part of Saskatchewan last week, which I'm glad we just got some rain because I am definitely not quite ready for snow. I'm sure most of you would agree.
Standing outside the other day at the triathlon I was amazed at how those who did turn up to compete ran into the water and continued through the rest of the competition after swimming through the cold water.
They came out and organizers had put out warm water to try and help those in the competition warm up themselves before continuing along. The one guy, in a container about one foot by two feet, managed to fit himself nearly completely inside of the container trying to warm up.
By the end they had all warmed up again after cycling and running, but standing outside I found I was cold. A cloud would wander in front of the sun and it became chilly just standing there. So actually swimming through the cold water and coming out into the cold air would have been very cold.
