Freakish About Weather

When I first met Dirt, and for the first years of our marriage, I noticed that he was some what freakishly concerned with the weather.  I mean freakish, with a capital “F” Freakish.

I, on the other hand, barely noticed it.  I loved it when it went my way, like snow on a day I didn’t want to go to school or wanted to go skiing, or both.  Or a really nice sunny day when I wanted to do something that I needed to do outside that rain would definitely mess up, like getting a tan.  Even my early years of gardening didn’t make me crazed about great weather. 

Slightly aware that our weather was very different than the rest of the world, like Kansas, I just grew stuff I knew would grow and not terribly worried about stuff that didn’t make it.  I loved rain. I was fond of puddles and loved my red galoshes that went over my saddle shoes.

But then I grew up and got married and over the years Dirt wore off on me and things changed, my gardening became more purposeful, haying season became a personal issue, I can’t find a decent pair of galoshes and now I am a weather freak as well.

So what do I wanna talk about most of the time Dear Reader?  Weather.  So tonight I’m going to indulge myself again.

We are about to have an El Nino event. (I love that they call a year’s worth of weather an event.  Only weathermen could get away with that.)  I was very very excited to hear that we, as a people living on the planet, were going to experience an El Nino finally after two years of La Nina. 

It means dry and warm for the Pacific Northwest. (and doesn’t dryer mean fewer clouds? It should.) But then, realizing that so much more than just the Puget Sound region is called the PNW I thought I should investigate further.

So I googled El Nino effect.  From one map and explanation I found that in actuality our weather is more normal than not during an El Nino.  Harumph.   Really?  But then….

Then I remembered the year I went to college.  I packed my skies, so excited to be doing a lot of skiing that year!  It was a horrible year.  It was the winter of 1976-77.  That year, and the years before, lift tickets were reasonable, affordable,  and never really changed.  After that year.. they doubled.  According to the internet, that season is still on record as being the worst ski season ever.

And yet, here’s the interesting bit, according to the El Nino information that was a “weak” El Nino year.  What?  It was warm and dry.  I know, I remember it well.  I went to college on the other side of the mountains in full anticipation of finally spending winters in a place that had winters.  It snowed very little.  It iced over very little.  I had no great excuse to miss early morning classes.  Even if it would have only been an excuse in my own mind and not one for the prof, I still had few real excuses.  Few times when I could marvel over the fact that I lived in a place that had heated sidewalks.  No snow, no cold.  Warm and dry.  And yet that year goes on record as a weak El Nino?!

This could make me very very happy.  Okay, sad, because I really do love winter weather, last year’s ice storm could not have been more groovy for a crazy group of weather nuts who live at Vicktory Farm & Gardens, in spite of all the work it caused.  And I love watching Bet ice skate on our ponds.

However.  I could not be fonder of the possibility that I won’t have to pump water out of my garden.  Thrilled over the prospect of not standing in the mud, shovel in hand, making sure that the water in the ditch I just adjusted was indeed flowing away from the garden and the pasture and into the canal that takes it to the pond and to the dam and over or through the dam.  Beavers.  I could almost consider enjoying the thought of them working this winter.

I am quite certain El Nino has in fact arrived, we are so very dry, and the dust in causing me to use my neti pot daily and think about wearing a bandit scarf while working outside, but it is not causing me to wish we had rain.  I’m happy to continue to drag hose in October!