The weather outside is...

I know we’re a four-seasons’ playground and everything but do the four seasons have to occur all in the same week?

I mean I was just getting over what can only be called our Land of Fog period.

For too many days in a row the North Okanagan became the land that time forgot as low-lying cloud basically turned our world a dull grey that clung to us like mildew and had a suffocating effect on our daily lives.

It was kind of cool too, like living in an old black-and-white Hitchcock movie or something, but after awhile you wonder if you will ever see colours the same way or, if indeed, the outside world has actually turned grey forever and ever.

I’m sure the balloonists in the Vernon Winter Carnival were frustrated. I don’t think we’ve had such dense and sustained fog in recent memory and it happens to occur the weekend they want to partake in the Balloon Fiesta?

Yikes.

Anyway, we leave that sustained weather pattern, that frustratingly showed up as sunny skies on most days on the weather channels (hey it’s not sunny in my world, or in my books sunny between 4 and 4:30 p.m. doesn’t count), and enter glorious sunshine for several days, with that hint of warmth for an hour or so that gets the senses flowing and thoughts of spring and summer and all that entails actually engages the brain to briefly entertain the thought of outside activity and sports and........

Then WHAM.

A snowstorm of near epic proportions drops down from the heavens and it’s not only winter again, it feels like early January.

You check the calendar and yup, it’s the second half of February when we’re usually starting to talk about the potential opening of the golf courses, especially in light of the recent good weather – whazzupp?

Of course the shock is magnified by the fact that if you’re a regular weather channels checker like myself the forecast did indeed call for flurries of two to four centimetres.

So, OK I knew it was going to snow based on the forecast, but not much and apparently it was going to rain in the afternoon so maybe I wouldn’t even have to shovel.

Yeah, right.

It snowed all day and we shovelled in the morning and at night and it was more likely 10 to 15 centimetres, if that’s what they call six inches these days.

Phew.

Now I know weather forecasting isn’t an exact science and a one-degree change can alter everything, but it also pains me that on several occasions this year I’ve noticed heavy snowfall warnings (complete with a bright red background on the TV screen that is very ominous and foreboding) that turned out to be nothing.

And when we actually get an actual heavy snowfall, even by old-time standards, at an unusual time of the year and............

Arrrrrrgggghhhhhhh.

Anyway, there’s always a bright side.

It ain’t dull and grey anymore.

The snow arrived just in time for this week’s BC Winter Games, which should be a hoot.

The ski hills should have enough snow to keep them cruising into spring break.

And, of course, it’s good for the ever-present water problem we have in these parts.

So no problem, right?

As I check the weather forecast for the next few days, cloudy and highs of five or six, lows of  -3, it looks fairly average for these parts at this time of the year.

I think we could all use some usual for a little while around here.

Then again, based on the past week or so and the reliability of recent forecasts, stay tuned and don’t put those snow shovels away quite yet.

– Glenn Mitchell is the managing editor of The Morning Star.

glenn@vernonmorningstar.com