I’m sitting on my front porch, clad in just a t-shirt and thin sweatshirt, basking in the glorious warmth of the sun and enjoying balmy, spring-like temperatures in January as I write this column.
Meanwhile, my parents back east in Montreal are telling me it’s a snot-freezing minus 17, dreary and they’re expecting a huge snowstorm overnight.
Muahahahahahahahaha (or however you spell a moustache-twirling and manically evil laugh)!
If this is global warming, then I hope all the local environmentalists will excuse me, but I’m going to start dramatically increasing my use of fossil fuels, burning coal for no reason and randomly spraying aerosol products up at the sky. Nevermind Mother Nature… I’m really loving this mild winter (winter? what winter?) that we’ve been experiencing.
Of course, the folks over at the ski hills and those who planned a kick-butt tube park at the Sea to Sky Gondola probably don’t feel quite the same way, I’d imagine.
However, if your livelihood isn’t weather-dependent, you’ve probably been smiling right along with me all season. I mean, c’mon, this past Monday Squamish had the same temperatures as Florida. I’m seriously considering breaking out my loud Aloha shirts and Bermuda shorts already. Anyone up for mai tais?
While out for a walk this past weekend, almost everyone I passed had some variation of the same comment about the weather: “Yay for global warming, eh?”
But, of course we can’t really blame (or praise) global warming for this year’s mild winter. Our weather actually comes thanks to El Nino, a flow of unusually warm surface waters that changes rain and temperature patterns around the world and usually raises global temperatures (but apparently not in Montreal on Monday). We’ve also been experiencing a bit of a “pineapple express” or “Chinook,” which brings warm air currents and rain all the way from my favourite place, Hawaii.
As El Nino is a cyclical kind of thing (along with the colder La Nina), unfortunately there’s really no way to ensure that we’ll have this same mild winter next year, or the next, however, my aerosol cans and I don’t mind taking the credit this time around. Now… who’s buying the mai tais?
