Look, the six-foot snow banks are gone!

Never have we so closely watched the weather as this winter and spring (or “sprinter,” as my daughter affectionately called it).  And we watch the weather very closely in Saskatchewan.

While it's not as apparent now, with the “normal” spring-like weather we’re having, there is still evidence of the horror we lived through the last six months.

As we drove northward on the May long weekend, we spotted a few specks of leftover snow banks on the side of the road.  At my parents’ farm, larger banks of snow adorned the east-facing slopes of the North Saskatchewan River, like miniature glaciers where glaciers really shouldn’t exist.  Regina’s landfill still has a massive snow bank where the winter’s record-breaking amounts of snow were dumped.  There is some disagreement, apparently, as to whether all of it will melt before winter… sheesh. 

Winter was always more enjoyable as a child

We had six months of snow on the ground this year – that’s enough.  We broke the record for the most snowfall and I believe it was the coldest month of March in 50 years.  It was painful for us, not to mention our Filipino neighbours, who bravely learned how to work a snow blower (I would guess it was their first time by the significant debris that ended up on our lawns).  It was also an experience of a lifetime for the Japanese student living with us, who brought with her non-insulated boots and paper-thin gloves for our minus 20-degree weather.

Almost every day, I would reassure our student from the warm clime of southern Japan that this would be the coldest it would get.  She must have thought we Canadians liked to tease, because it became colder the closer it got to April.  And every time we would drive down our street, jumping in and out of foot-deep snow ruts, she would utter, “Whoa, wow!”  When I told her we’ve had the most snow ever, she said, “I’m very lucky.”  The Japanese are so diplomatic.

There were some explanations offered as to why we suffered this cruel fate during this period of so-called global warming.  The climate people used the analogy of a large rock up in the atmosphere over Greenland.  Somehow this “rock” diverted the jet stream so we got all the cold, and somewhere in the world, they got a bit more heat.  Maybe the ice caps melted a bit more at our expense, which is not exactly a win-win.  Polar bears suffer, we suffer.  Why don’t we just keep the atmospheric air flows where they’re meant to be?

As I shovelled 12,000 pounds of snow off my roof in April, I briefly considered moving to a warmer climate like B.C. or North Dakota (a little warmer maybe?)  Then I reconsidered.  After all, I now I have the privilege to tell my grandchildren and great-grandchildren that I survived one of the harshest winters in the history of all mankind. 

When they’ll be going to school in shorts and t-shirts in December, cruising down the streets on their hovercrafts, I’ll be able to say to them, “Back in my day, I had to walk through six feet of snow, uphill both ways, just to get to work!”  

Because I did… I really did.