Winter Weather

Dear friends,

Perhaps it is time for something other than medical news.

The Winter Solstice comes around each year on December 21. It marks the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere — the day on which the sun in its daily journey across the sky dips to its lowest point at noon for the entire year. After this climatic day (for some) the sun will be a bit higher in the sky at each noontime and the lengthening days will probably be almost imperceptibly noticed by most of the hemisphere’s creatures. The Babylonians in 3000 BC, the master astronomers, knew amazing details of planetary motions, kept star tables of hundreds of stars, and were also well aware of the solstice. Even in their day this event was celebrated as a day of renewal and in every culture that we know of it was a day of celebration. The Romans in Julius Caesar’s time noted the day as December 25 in their calendar, which was not entirely accurate but that day became the day of celebration. It was not until the 4^th century that the Church chose this already celebratory day to mark Christ’s birth. Mrs. Wells, my fine 7^th grade teacher, would be pleased at how well I recall her lessons of Earth’s motions and how they determine our seasons. Before we were taught all the reasons for our cold winters I remember proposing that the Earth is more distant from the sun during our winter. I was surprised to learn that, due to our elliptical orbit around the sun, we are actually just a shade closer to sun during our winter. Teaching Socratically, it took some time before our class appreciated that our seasons are largely determined by Earth’s constant inclination as it orbits. Buffalo school children were especially interested in learning reasons for cold and snowy winters.

We are just now entering the third week in January and the sun has now been doing its best to contribute a bit more warmth to the frozen fields of the north. But, our Earth is massive and any warming lags the solstice by about a month. This coming week in January is, on the average, the coldest time of the year. During my boyhood in Buffalo this was the peak season for determined fisherman to drive their jalopies out onto the frozen surface of Lake Erie, one or two feet thick, and ice fish through a drilled hole. In my day the adventurers might put up a little shanty to shield themselves from the fierce winds that whipped across the open lake but I have heard from relatives that the little fishing cabins are now elaborate domiciles equipped with generators to power stoves and TVs to watch the current sports. The fish of choice is the Walleye that can weigh in at 30 pounds. Every Spring thaw there were always the news reports of a few foolhardy souls, probably drunk as part of the fishing ritual, who had to be rescued from their ice floes heading north up the Niagara River before they reached the falls a mere 25 miles upriver.

Other weather stories fill the front pages. There are record floods in Australia, Pakistan, and steady rains in Brazil causing terrible mudslides. The warmer surface temperatures of the oceans have been implicated in the excessive precipitation we have witnessed including our recent series of snowstorms on our east coast. The 2001 to 2010 decade was the warmest since weather data was collected in the 1880s. Likewise 2010 was tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record. People naturally doubt the existence of global warming in the midst of our recent winter storms. The warming is indisputable but its effects on our daily weather are evidently no simple matter. There is more energy in our weather system that seems to be producing more variation and more extreme highs and lows in all categories. This past summer there were severe heat waves in Europe and in Russia, record floods are prominent everywhere, hurricanes have been more intense and frequent.

What will poets have to say about this situation?

Keep warm and love,

Merwin