Climate Oddity

Comment by Yves (current length of day 8h 1m):

“Over here [in England], I don't know how many public holidays there are, but people take days off before Christmas, between Christmas and New Year, and into the first week of January. The roads are empty. But at this time of year I have always felt the public holidays are enough, and the best place to be is at work, because it is so dark and dead outside. Spring and summer are the time for holidays!”


Comment by Freyashawk (length of day 9h 23m):

“I feel compelled to write something positive about Winter and the time of Darkness. In Northern cultures, Winter traditionally was the time when labour ceased to be unremitting, when the fields lay blanketed by snow and families were kept at home. In the warmth of a fire, stories would be told and crafts would be undertaken to keep minds and bodies occupied during the time of 'rest'. Winter is a season when Nature slumbers. It is a season when the light of the Sun is supplanted by the light and warmth of the hearth. I love Winter in the North. It is a season of small lights and warm fires rather than a season of suffocating heat. It is traditionally a season of rest and meditation.”

Being a native Floridian (current length of day 10h 21m), I must put in a few words about my subtropical climate, which only occasionally makes one feel like holing up indoors and warding off the great darkness of winter with fires. True, our Florida sun moves south in winter, our days shrink, and like our Nordic brothers and sisters we bring in evergreen trees and mistletoe and love small lights, but it never snows and the winter is much easier on us than it is in northern climes.

From November till February it is more like a long Virginia autumn than a real winter. We have no snow, but we have occasional freezing weather interspersed with warm days – so that when I telephoned my parents on some winter holiday from the ice-bound landscape of Washington State or a snowy day in England I never knew if they would be warming themselves in front of the fireplace or sitting outdoors in the sun enjoying iced tea.

I wouldn’t mention this except that we have having such extraordinary weather in Central Florida this year.

Usually it stays as warm as summer right through September, when shortly before Halloween the first cold front passes through and drops the temperatures into the 40's at night. There are sure to be some warmer periods after that, but around Christmas we almost always begin to get really cold weather – freezing temperatures, perhaps even briefly in the 20’s around dawn, enhanced by gusty winds. From then on during a “normal” winter the cold fronts which periodically move down from the northwest United States bring cold or even freezing weather, relieved between the fronts by daytime temperatures in the low 70’s

But not this winter. There was no Halloween cold snap, nor was Santa Claus' sleigh sped by icy winds. I was still swimming in December. We are getting the warm days without the cold days. The thermometer once went down into the 40’s overnight but soon rose again to night temperatures in the 60’s. For quite awhile it has been no lower than 60 overnight and in the high 70’s and even 80’s during the days.

The kind of weather we’re having – 82 degrees today and 79 tomorrow – is most unusual. I’m not qualified to join the global warming debate, but it certainly is warm . . . and I love it. I hope to continue enjoying it until Florida is submerged by melting glaciers, or until, preferably, my home thirty miles from the Atlantic Ocean becomes oceanfront property.