A Taste of What’s to Come

The unusual warmth over the weekend proved to us that the spring will soon be upon us.

Those of us who have been around New England for a while – like all our lives – understand something about the end of winter.

It almost never ends in March, and certainly not during the first two weeks of March.

But this short respite from what has been a memorable winter has given rise to soaring hope that maybe this could be the year that the winter disappears and spring breaks out early.

What are the chances of that?

From one to ten, as a handicapper we know would be prone to say, one.

Ten to one, he’d say are much better odds than zero, which is basically how he truly feels.

Above all, the weekend’s temperature dip will not be long lasting.

Forecasters are predicting warmer than usual weather for the week – and this is welcome.

Not having to pay for $107 a barrel home heating oil for a week is a real savings for those who use heating oil heat.

Best of all, the snow has nearly vanished in an almost magical display of Nature’s power.

This disappearing act takes from our sight snow that had turned so black and dirty that Charles Dickens might have written of it thusly: The snow was black as charcoal. The streets were black. The sidewalks were black. Everything looked black.

The streets and sidewalks revealed by the melting snow are in need of a good sweep and then a good steam.

The residue of efforts to get through this winter of our discontent is made up of sand, salt, dirt, everything mixed together by plows and packed into mounds of snow turned black as night.

Are we done with the snow?

Let’s hope we are, say the hopeful.

No we aren’t, say the realistic among us.

This is for certain … the spring is beginning its beguiling dance.

Here and there we see her and feel her.

But she remains an enigma during the second week of March.

This has always been so and will never change.

Not withstanding Global Warming’s effect on the earth, March remains a difficult month and a cold one at that.