Sometime during the third week of January we mark the “turn of winter.” Days have been lengthening since the Winter Solstice, in December, but increasing sunlight doesn’t really dent Vermont’s cold for another month. Starting now we should experience a gradual rise in the normal mean temperature.
It’s also midpoint of the winter heating season. In a “normal” year – I don’t think there’s any such thing here, but that’s what the statistical averages suggest – in a normal year we should’ve racked up about half of the winter’s total of heating degree days and have about half the woodpile left. Better check.
Around this time we often have a “January Thaw.” Afternoon temperatures rise to the 40’s, even 50’s, and some nights don’t go below freezing. Sounds great, right? We could use one. Well it looks like that’s not going to happen and I’m OK with that.
Oh it’s nice to feel warm for a change, but thaws are difficult. The melt and freeze cycle forces snowshoers and cross-country skiers to fight through afternoon slush and skid around on crusty ice the next morning. Our hillside road turns to mud and then into sheets of ice. Sometimes bears come out of hibernation and wander around knocking over my bird feeders. Pond and river ice weakens: Bobhouses tilt and skaters' feet get wet. When temperatures drop again dangerous ice jams sometimes form in places like Montpelier. Who needs all that?
Plus, no thaw means I can continue putting off jobs I didn’t quite get to before things locked up and haven’t felt like doing since. That sheet metal that’s been flapping on the garage roof? Those loose gutters? They’ll hold ‘til spring.
Some of us regard a January thaw as a vision of a kind - a hopeful promise of warmth and longer days to come. I think it’s nature’s version of a bait-and-switch. It’s a bit like the old Boston Red Sox in the days of the “Curse of the Bambino” - the teams we suffered with before they won the series in ‘04. They’d take you to the edge of triumph and then destroy your spirit by collapsing in uniquely creative ways – again and again. No, my roller coaster days are over. The momentary relief of a thaw isn’t worth the inevitable disappointment.
More winter? Bring it on!
