Whenever we're standing around at work griping about the weather, I participate only halfheartedly if the "this heat is unbearable" topic comes up. No matter how bad summer gets, I hate winter so much more. (Bring it on, global warming). I don't believe the claims of Farmers' Almanac that its forecasts are accurate 80 to 85 percent of the time (the dirty little secret of meteorologists is that when they're talking about the weather more than 48 hours out, they're just making it up). Still, this can't help but make me shiver a little:
Americans shouldn't expect Mother Nature to help with their heating bills this winter because it's going to be nippy, according to the venerable Farmers' Almanac.
After one of the warmest winters on record, this coming winter will be much colder than normal from coast to coast, the almanac predicts.
Many defenders of winter make the point that, no matter how cold it gets, you can always add clothing. There is a limit to how much clothing you can subtract, no matter how hot it is. This may have been amusing before modern technology brought us innovations such as furnaces and central air. The main consideration today is travel time, how much you wilt or freeze going from cooled or heated house to the car and from the car to and cooled or heated office. And what's the common denominator there? No matter how hot it is, the car will cool down in a minute or two. Unless you live and work a half-hour apart, you won't even start warming up before you reach your destination.
And don't even get me started on scraping the windshield. Shoveling the sidewalk. De-icing the steps. Walking backwards into the wind.
