Good Lord. Snow is due Friday. Snow. Some predictions call for snow showers through the weekend, with lows in the 20s. So it's back to the cooler ahead of schedule - way ahead of schedule. The first one-inch snowfall usually happens around November 18. Measurable snow that sticks around three weeks before Halloween is the harbinger of a nasty winter that has no pity.
In a way, we're due; it's been years since we were socked in early, with permanent drifts on the lawn before the Christmas music cranks up in earnest. Weather doesn't operate according to karma, of course - just because we think we've earned a warm spring and a long lovely summer doesn't mean we'll get one, any more than the cruel un-summer we just had means an attenuated autumn with warm afternoons and crisp hey-let's-build-a-bonfire nights. But right now the idea of beginning our six-month shut-in period before October crests the hill is the sort of thing that makes people saw their wrists with ginzu knives.
It won't stay. It can't stay. Heaven help us if it does stay: The leaves have hardly begun to fall, let alone turn en masse.
Imagine if the Twins stadium was finished, and they were playing a World Series game next week. What a pity if we finally get all three outdoor stadia just as the world tips into a cycle of global cooling. Everyone's out of the climate controlled Dome, playing in the elements, dropping balls because their hands are blue. Our timing is just exquisite.
