How long the quiet?

The quiet around Roundtop continues on these late-summer-but-feels-like-fall days. Mist rises in the early morning but soon dissipates. Even the air is still; not even the leaves rustle. With no competition from the forest, Blue jays sound even louder than usual, and the owls sound closer than they are.

Perhaps I have even more reason to enjoy this lovely weather while it lasts. The folks over at Accuweather are predicting a long, snowy and harsh winter for the eastern U.S. Click here for the full prediction. Thanks to Sam, my former boss, now blogging over at Heart Matters, for the heads up on this one.

My own experience suggests nearly the opposite of this prediction, however. I have found that it’s as though the weather can’t stay untypical for too long and rights itself by going a bit further in whatever the other direction for the next season or two would be. So I have noticed that a warm winter is often followed by cooler than average spring. An untypically warm spring would be followed by a cooler than average summer and so on. Sometimes the untypically warmer or cooler weather lasts for two seasons instead of one before the correction begins, but I can’t remember three seasons in a row that were overly warm or cool.

That said, as someone who usually likes winter quite a lot (I live next to a ski area, after all) I would not be unhappy to be proven wrong this time around. And truthfully, my area is due for a real winter again. It’s been some years since I’ve had one.