We don’t know who said it first, but it is commonly observed locally that “if you don’t like Chattanooga weather, just wait 24 hours.”
We have had more than our usual share of extreme weather this year, with lots of snow and threats of snow, with some other freezing stuff mixed with rain. But temperatures are expected to approach 50 degrees before this week is over.
Most of the rest of our country has had it much worse. Washington, D.C., for example, has been virtually shut down from more than hip-deep snow. There has been lots of snow in the usual areas up North and out West. But even in the Deep South, as far as New Orleans and Florida, there has been some snow.
So we don’t hear as much about alleged “global warming” these days.
While winter is not all over yet, some may remember optimistically from their school days the oft-quoted poem of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), who said pertinently, “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
American humorist Mark Twain (his real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens; he lived from 1835 to 1910) is often “credited” with having said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” There’s no clear record that he originated that comment. Some believe the observation originated with Charles Dudley Warner in a Hartford Courant editorial on Aug. 24, 1897.
Weather does play a big role in our lives, and does stir a lot of comments. Still, both the proverbial groundhog and sophisticated meteorologists have a hard time getting it “right” in their predictions some of the time. Nature often fools us. So we have to adjust to whatever comes.
But “down here,” in Chattanooga and in mid-February, many of us are wondering, and hoping: “Can spring be far behind?”