Instead of children not knowing what snow is they might be asking with sweet innocence “What’s ‘spring’, daddy?” as “Britain is gearing up for snow as temperatures plummet and yellow cold weather warnings remain firmly in place.” The UK is not the only place grappling with, of all things, cold weather in February, so is the United States where the Boston Herald warns “Don’t put your shovels away after digging out Sunday morning – more snow is anticipated to be on the way in Massachusetts in the days ahead”, Meteorologist Eric Snitil recently posted that: “Thus far, this has been the coldest January across the Lower 48 since 1988, 37 years ago. How about them frozen apples?” And the weather in Ontario has not let up either. There’s no end in sight to double-digit lows in Ottawa. Which could be brushed aside as just one of those things, as for instance with The Weather Network saying that “A brutal, long-duration cold snap struck Calgary, Alta., just as we turned the page into February” provided we could do the same if it happened to be unusually balmy and we called it a mere “hot snap” even if it was brutal and of long duration unlike, say, a snap.

So much for the Canadian government’s prediction of a mild winter here, complete with scary dark red shading, that we cited in late January with a raised eyebrow (metaphorically; to our chagrin we can’t do that one physically) about the forecast and the model it rode in on. Instead, we were told a week ago, “Canada’s spring weather will be delayed as the polar vortex brings ‘messy winter storms’”. Not climate change, of course; as usual the very word “climate” vanishes like “Wiarton Willie“ after seeing his shadow or, if you’re American, Punxsutawney Phil. As for the computer, well, its cult insists that the Great Calculator is always right, just not about messy details. Ones like “Calgary sees coldest start to February in 50 years, with more Arctic air ahead”.

Well, as usual, you get the weirdest dissonance between what gets said if it happens to be unusually warm and what gets said if it happens to be typically cold. For instance “Heated-up ice-and-snow economy injects new vitality into China’s economy” because:

“in northern China, where ice-and-snow resources are abundant, many regions are ramping up efforts to attract and welcome tourists for this winter season…. In recent years, China's ice-and-snow economy has gradually formed a complete industrial chain, ranging from manufacturing to tourism.”

Strange, as the stuff vanishes… from the pages of most newspapers. But whether they explicitly predicted it or not, all this alarmist insistence on the “hottest year ever” and the end of winter, snow and life as we know it did rather require that we not get stuck in a deep freeze that just won’t end.

Incidentally “Wiarton Willie” seems to nail it roughly 25% of the time. Which, ironically, is better than those expensive computer models despite all Willie’s scandals, from turning up dead one year as the wrong corpse to allegations of groundhogicide.

P.S. As one of the Canadian stories mentioned, “If you've been hoping for an early spring, you'll have to wait a while longer as arctic air and ‘messy winter storms’ hang around.” But why would anyone want an early spring, harbinger of climate breakdown? Oh right. Because warmth is good.