Are You There, Winter...

(A pollen speckled Camilia bloom on the bush by the front door)

January is not quite over yet, and all I have to say is…what is up with our weather here on the Georgia coast?! It’s almost as if winter never arrived. Not fully. Autumn swung by. Made its presence known. Stayed for its usual yearly visit. Winter seemed to signal its approach, but it never really got here. The Solstice came and was celebrated, but I have yet to feel the actual complete transition. We had a few really crisp and chilly nights that got down there on the temperature scale. Around 40, or so. Then this last week was like spring had prematurely sprung. The temperatures lingered in the ‘60’s for a few days, and then the warmer days came. Warm as in the upper-70’s warm. No jacket necessary. T-shirt weather. Add to that the fact that when I walked out to my car to head to work yesterday, my Audi was covered with a yellow dusting of pollen (we had some rain in the evening which rinsed things off, thankfully). It seems that the trees are as confused as I am…

Eighteen or so years spent living in Los Angeles without any real seasonal shifts had me pining for the changing seasonal tides I grew up with. Now I’m back in my home state, in the ‘four season’ zone. It is a bit different here in the coastal town of Savannah. No ice storms to speak of like I experienced growing up in Atlanta. We have had extremely cold temperatures here, but not as bone chilling as the winter bite one gets deeper inland. Will winter finally show itself, and stick around for a spell? I don’t want to even hazard a guess. Of the unpredictable things in life, the weather seems to be in the top 10…at least. I just hope that the normal seasonal development of the local flora hasn't been messed with too much.

The latter half of yesterday saw the temperature take a dive into the neighborhood of 50 degrees. Today is also a jacket day. It seems winter might be making its approach again, and I hope this time it’s not just a ‘drive-by’. I really hope for a winter shift even if its a late one.

For now it looks to be jacket weather.  However, I’ll be keeping both my t-shirts and my heavier coats at the ready. To quote the Boy Scouts, I will “be prepared”…