What’s wrong with this picture?

Few would believe it to be a picture of Minnesota in January.

Paul, my favorite local weatherman proclaimed today that the typical, seasonal “Snowbird”, who usually closes up the upper-midwest house and heads for Arizona this time of year, is having an identity crisis.  There is more snow in Arizona and New Mexico at the moment than all of the  northern prairies.  And if you want to ski – go south!   If you want to skate, there’s always the indoor arena. Today’s Fergus Journal featured photos of golfers teeing off on the ninth green.  Who needs Phoenix!

The ice fishermen are confounded.  Some have defiantly hauled their houses out upon the lakes, for that is “what they do” this time of year.  Nothing like braving the frigid air to sit in a out-house sized shack and stare at a hole in the ice. Many of them have “broken through” in a bigger way than planned.  Thankfully all, so far, have been rescued.

We have had a few days this past month when the temperature in Atascadero, California was somewhat BELOW the 50 degrees in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.  Paul (who I consult daily in the Star Tribune)  attributes it to a continual gust of powerful Pacific air, streaming from the west coast and continuing all across the upper midwest, which appears to be overpowering and holding back the arctic front from Canada.  He also is writing more and more in terms of “Record Weather Events.”  Worldwide.  And even mentioning that controversial term – Global Warming – with greater frequency.

Personally, I can’t quite understand why the subject isn’t raising shouts of concern.  It is our entire world at stake after all.  Perhaps the matter is just too immense a subject to begin to fathom, as if it’s Advanced Universal Astro-Physics and Cataclysms 101 and we’re just learning our “times 2’s”.  So we close the book and put it aside for another day.  Or another century.

But let’s not.  There might not be one.

Bless our earth.