Thomas Garcia: Wishing for an end to roller-coaster winter weather

QCS Columnist

I hope that with the start of Spring this weekend the weather will begin to even out and we won’t have the odd extremes within a few days of each other that we have experienced thie winter.

I don’t think I’d be alone in saying that this winter has really played havoc with everything. Instead of one big storm that shuts us down for a few days as we’ve had in years past, we experienced sporadic storms with periods of warm weather in between.

There were times when I thought Mother Nature was toying with us—you know, giving us a Thursday and Friday in the high 60’s to low 70’s and a Saturday and Sunday in the low 30’s with snow, rain and winds.

Of course, living in Eastern New Mexico, we are no strangers to winds. In fact, if the wind isn’t blowing, we know we just have to wait five minutes or plan an outdoor event and it starts again.

I have never liked the cold or winter or snow. The merry-go-round of hot and cold spells over this winter has reinforced my disdain and really thrown me for a loop.

It seemed as if the weather was just messing around with us, much like the way my cat Brownie plays with his toy mice. One minute everything is fine. Then, Brownie has you in his clutches, bats you around a few times and throws you in the air. He catches you in his mouth, shakes you around a few times, drops you on the floor, and then zooms off before you know what happened.

We would have mild winter temperatures in the 60’s for the first part of the week, giving us hope for the weekend, then, come Thursday morning we’d have overcast skies and snow flurries. For the next two days we’d be avoiding the slick streets as much as possible and staying home with the heat turned up.

Then we’d have five days of OK weather with some chilly nights, but just as we were recovering from our snow trauma, we’d get hit yet again with a sporadic snowstorm that was predicted but still managed to sneak up on us. The temperatures plummeted, the flurries began and overnight we once again looked out onto a winter landscape.

The only good part was that it lasted one day. Most of the snow melted in a day or two, which is much better than what happened to the poor folks on the east coast. They got really hammered by the snow with major systems dumping more than 28 inches at a time.

If I woke up to more than two feet of snow for more than one weekend a winter, much less a month, I’d seriously considering hibernating.

My cats Toby and Brownie like it when I leave the front door open so they can watch the world through the screen door. They tend to get fussy on days they don’t get to look out, but on those days this winter it was because it had either snowed, was snowing or a cold front was blowing through.

I would be watching a movie and the cats would be by the door looking back at me while letting out a sad meow. They couldn’t understand why I refused them their door time.

I did open the door for a little bit during one of the snowstorms and the cats did sit at the door looking out as the snow fell—for a whole two minutes, then they retreated to the warmth of the blanket on the couch. While they made themselves comfortable on the couch they each gave me a “you should really shut the door, its cold,” look.

So here were are a few days away from the start of Spring and I’m looking forward to saying good-bye to the snow and welcoming warm temperatures and rain showers.

With my optimism about Spring and expressed disdain for the cold, however, part of me can’t help but fear I may again wind up being winter’s toy mouse.

Thomas Garcia is a senior writer at the Quay County Sun. He can be reached at [email protected]