Another December day, another freeze warning up for our area. As I’m sure y’all can testify to (especially my Goodboys friends back east), it’s been one strange winter thus far. Typically, your average winter in the Valley of the Sun goes something like this: the first week of December (typically around the 7th) you get a period of clouds and rain followed by the first freeze warning of the winter. You wrap your cactuses and cover your fragile vegetation and then get two nights of freezing temperatures. But then the cold is gone and December then reverts back to days in the low-to-mid 60s and nights in the 40s with a sun that shimmers through the high clouds like tinsel on a Christmas tree during the day. At night, the sky with the moon and those same high clouds shines like a chilled martini glass; while a little chilly you can still enjoy a glass of wine on the back patio in shirt sleeves. January is typically tranquil with the occasional chilly day and night in the high 50s and mid-to-high 30s at night. With February comes a repeat of December with a period of storminess followed by the last freeze of the year. So you again wrap up the cactus and wait a couple of days. The cold departs, and then you get around that last week of the month that day where the sun feels different and you know pretty soon you’ll be looking at 80 and the heat season starts over again.

Not this year, though. December has been unusually cold for around these parts, and has been so since the start of the month. And not just chilly but windy as well – the kind that cuts right through you and makes the walk to the mailbox at the end of the street a damned unpleasant task. We’ve had our first freeze, and in minutes I’m about ready to go out and wrap the cactuses all over again because we’ve got another stretch of 3-4 days where the morning lows will be at freezing or below. For the past couple of weeks it has actually been warmer in Massachusetts than it has been here!

Of course, it look as if that’s all about to change and the season will (hopefully) start flipping to something more akin to these parts, but that’s what can happen during an El Nino year.