The temperature gauge on my car Saturday morning read zero degrees when I hopped in to run some errands.
I spent several minutes chipping frost off my windows for what felt like the hundredth time this week, even though I know we had a warm start of the week.
When I rolled up to the ATM, my window wouldn’t open. It was frozen shut.
There’s something about the gray haze of winter in Ohio that makes you dream of warmer weather. Jimmy Buffett nailed it: “It’s those changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes, nothing remains quite the same.”
I couldn’t help but reminisce back to the early 2000s, for those two winters I worked in Savannah, Georgia.
If you’re not familiar with this coastal Georgia gem, the average high temperature in January is 60, and the average low is 39, according to USClimateData.com. It wasn’t sunny all the time, but it sure felt that way after a few decades of Ohio winters.
This hardened Yankee couldn’t help but laugh at the southerners and how they handled the cold. (Nor could they stop laughing at how much I complained about the humidity in the summer.)
You started to see people wearing parkas when the temperatures dropped below 40, while I still donned my fall jacket.
We received a trace of snow in January 2001, and people absolutely freaked out. They stood outside watching it come down. I saw grown adults, who hadn’t seen any amount of snow in five years, sticking their tongues out to catch it.
That’s when you realize we’re just better equipped to handle that kind of weather.
My wife, who truly hates the cold and attended high school in Florida before moving back to Ohio for college, recalled her excitement in getting a varsity jacket. The only trouble was it never got cool enough for her to wear it.
My ice scraper might as well have been made of gold the one night I pulled it out after work in Savannah. A group gathered in the parking lot as they waited for their cars’ defrosters to do the chore. Rather than wait, I pulled my trusty scraper out of my car, and people marveled at it as I quickly wiped off the little bit of frost on my windshield.
During that trace of snow back in 2001 there, cars skidded on it. People wondered if they’d have to cancel school because there wasn’t a snowplow to be found there.
I suspect they were just as confused about this weekend. Forecasters predicted snow and cold this weekend, the Savannah Morning News reported. It looked like it passed them by, as temperatures stayed in the 30s. Don’t worry; they’ll be back to 66 by Tuesday. On that same day, we’re expecting to hit a balmy 46 back here in Ohio.
You’ll never hear people here complain too loudly about the weather. It’s just part of our Midwestern work ethic.
We like the four seasons. We like seeing how the gloom of winter turns to the green of spring. We enjoy seeing that transition to the swelter of summer. That makes us appreciate the colors of autumn, just before we return to the grays of winter.
It’s just enough to help us put up with these handful of days when the temperature gauge says zero, you’re scraping your windows, and the car window won’t budge.
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