If you don't like the weather, wait a minute...

Definitely freaky weather. On Thursday it got up to 64 degrees here in mid-central Maine, breaking the former record of 55 degrees for Dec. 3rd. People were coming into the library exclaiming "It's like spring out there!"

The heretofore unknown Jennifer Sporzynski of Portland made herself famous, at least for 15 minutes, with her quote, issued to a reporter while sitting on a park bench in the sun: "It's not right. It's December. It's supposed to be snowing. I like warm weather," she went on to say," but not in December."

While I think most Mainers were delighted with the balmy day (which developed only after an early morning of high winds and rain), we all knew it was weird.

So today Jennifer, and the rest of us, got your more typical Maine-in-December weather. It was overcast and distinctly nippy this morning when I went out to mail some Christmas cards, and buy some more. Then late this afternoon as I was making my second trip to the post office in Augusta to mail cards (I have friends who celebrate Hanukkah, rather than Christmas, and friends overseas, so those cards needed to go out), I suddenly saw what looked like snow rushing at my vehicle, illuminated by the headlights. The forecast had said possibility of rain or snow, and this stuff had too much substance to be rain.

Well, I couldn't complain. Except for that mini snow storm we had a month ago, on Nov. 6th (see Note of Nov. 8), we have had no snow at all; indeed, for much of November it was unusually mild. Friends and family living in the south would say, are you freezing yet, and I would have to say no, indeed, it's usually been in the upper 40s, even in the 50s. But I just got up from one of those two-hour naps that are one of my luxuries on a weekend (and generally result in my then being able to sit at the computer writing until one o'clock in the morning), and when I passed the kitchen window whose blinds I keep cracked so that I can see the light in my next-door neighbors windows, so I won't feel so cut off from the world, I noticed that the ground was white. I then lifted the curtain of the other kitchen window, which gives a view of my large back yard, and sure enough, winter had arrived. Not with a vengeance -- my guess is there isn't more than an inch -- but I just checked the weather, and we could get 2-4 inches overnight. Hello, winter.

Although, with global warming, you never know.