My Climactic Utopia

I believe that I live in a climactic utopia. Many would disagree with me (the heat lovers in particular!), but I stand by it. Two things I really do not like 1)humidity/heat 2) snow. I was so excited about moving to my climactic utopia. Before we moved we heard the great myths of the area (though we were unaware they were "typically's" rather than "facts"). We were told that it NEVER rains in the summer after July 4. Also, it usually doesn't snow but if it does it's ALWAYS gone in a day or two.

Of course the first fall I was here, we had the rainiest Nov ever recorded. Lovely. I was expecting lots of rain (except in the summer) so it didn't really bother me much. The temps were mild and heck, at least it wasn't snow, right??!! What I wasn't warned about were all the other weird weather phenomena here I hadn't heard about before. Terms like thunder snow and freezing fog or the fact that "winter storm" here doesn't always mean snow - sometimes it means fiercely high winds. In my transition house that first fall the furnace was like a rocket taking off and that fierce wind blowing through the cracks in the house was like a train running through the kitchen. Still, whats a little rain and wind??

And then, it happened. We had the dreaded SNOWFALL. If I didn't like snow living in the east, I absolutely despise snow now. In the east, snow is such a pain. It delays plans and after living in Pittsburgh with a forever long driveway, I'm done shoveling for the rest of my life! Then, back east, life goes on. Maybe a snow day but eventually even after a blizzard, the roads are cleared and life moves forward. After moving here, I learned the true meaning of the word "snow bound", and let me tell you, it is not fun! Another fun new term I learned about: "chain-up". Bizarre. These are not things I even thought about, (or in the case of chains had even HEARD about) back East. See, in the East, we don't care about the environment - or we care MORE about getting around than the environment, so we go ahead and use this effective tool called salt. We also have plows. When I say plows, note that it is plural, not a plow, but many plows. These plows can salt, sand, shovel - they do amazing things and every town, county, state whatever has a LOT of them. They are quite handy in the battle against snow. I have lived through a couple of blizzards back east and still after 2 or 3 days max (and this is for storm of the century type blizzards) the roads are clear and life goes back to normal. Let me define clear - they are CLEAR folks, like I see blacktop in all the parking lots and roads. Clear like there is NOTHING on them - they are dry and normal even though there is foot upon foot of snow on the grass. I feel I have to define this for my local readers because "clear" roads here means at best that a plow has come and compacted a nice snow base so that your chains have something to grip. And notice I said "a" plow on purpose -- no plurals here!

Now I get it, because in defense of my climactic utopia, it is true that we don't *typically* get a ton of snow, and when we do it is frequently like it was this week - one snow day and then it is gone and melted, so it is hard to justify the expense of plows etc that are rarely needed (although if we had proper snow battling tools the snow this week wouldn't have been enough to even cause a snow day...) However, every couple of years we get slammed and some supposedly freakish weather phenomena strikes and we stay below freezing for a couple of weeks. When that happens, you learn all about "snow bound" unless of course you have "chains" to make it out of your own cul-de-sac...

As for the humidity, it pretty much is non-existent, which is my driving force in saying that it STILL is pretty much my climactic utopia. I really love that we start talking about how "hot" it is whenever the temp rises above 75. My first summer there was a record day that hit the upper 90's and I did think I was dying and I did say if anything like this happens again I'm looking at getting central air conditioning, but thankfully it hasn't gotten near that hot since. Despite the mild temps, some folks here think that because they live near the ocean, it means its tropical. It is even difficult to find a normal heavy sweatshirt (that isn't a hoodie jacket type) or sweater in stores. That's because at best, the heat everywhere, is high enough that at most all that is needed is jeans and a long sleeve shirt, at worst its not uncommon to see shorts and flip-flops anytime throughout the year.

The only other somewhat weather related complaint I have is the vast changes in daylight. We're really far north. In the northeast - like that whole Midwest(OH, PA, IN, IL) & the Boston/DC corridor you sometimes think you live in the north because you are north of the Mason Dixon line and people refer to that part of the country as the north, but that isn't north. I NOW understand the north. This is really the only part of my climactic utopia that I can't get used to. In the winter, it is great sleeping weather - its dark from 4:30pm to 8am. In the summer, the opposite. I don't sleep in the summer since its now bright from 4am-10pm. My body just never "feels" the time anymore (or is that because I'm getting old?). I realize this is something folks that have always lived here don't get (like the fact that walls do exist without texture and look just fine) but while there are longer and shorter days further south, the difference is not so drastic.

Still, the temps are generally mild, the snow is less, the humidity pretty much doesn't exist and it rarely gets hot. The views are unbelievable even when the weather doesn't cooperate and who cares about a little rain? This is pretty much as close to climactic utopia as I'm gonna get in this world and pretty much, I love it.