Is So!

Weather and climate are affected by more factors than sunlight. Well, if there was no sunlight, I suppose we wouldn't have any weather and we'd all be dead, so I guess it's all related to sunlight. Nevertheless, what I said about European seasons is true. Most of Europe is farther north than Chicago, as a matter of fact, Rome, Italy is about the same latitude as Chicago, and their climate is way different.

Berlin, Germany must be farther north than even Cheboygan because, when I pulled guard duty around the time of the summer solstice, I saw the last glimmer of twilight and the first glimmer of daybreak during the same two hour tour. It was either 10:00 PM till midnight or midnight till 2:00 AM, I forget which. Around Cheboygan, at the same time of the year, the time between last light and first light is about twice that long, and it's even longer than that in Chicago. The winters in Berlin were mild compared to Chicago. I don't think it ever got below zero all the time I was there, although it did go down into the single digits a few nights one winter and people thought it was the end of the world. Berlin had kind of a maritime climate, cool and damp most of the time, and seldom really hot in the summer or really cold in the winter, yet I'm pretty sure the nearest ocean was at least a hundred miles away.

I left Berlin in late February, and the buds were starting to open on some of the trees. When I got to Chicago on March 1, there was still a little snow on the ground. Two weeks later, after helping my dad take the snowplow off and put the mower deck on his garden tractor, I made my first visit to Cheboygan. I got there after midnight on March 15, the temp was 15 below, and there was a good three feet of snow on the level. To be fair, that was a record breaker, but it still made me wonder why anybody would want to live there. My buddy told me to come back in June, which I did, and I've been here ever since.

We lived in Indian River, 20 miles south of Cheboygan for about ten years. Although Indian River is not on the Great Lakes, they get way more lake effect snow than we do. Their winters are colder and their summers are hotter too. Cheboygan is kind of on the Great Lakes, but not like Chicago is. The Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, is only about five miles wide and you can see the other side on a clear day. A north wind generally doesn't bring us lake effect snow, but a west wind sometimes does. A north west wind usually blows the snow down the Lake Michigan shore and as far inland as I-75, but it usually misses us here in Cheboygan.

Some time ago, I viewed a video course on weather and climate. The prof said that Europe's climate is the way it is because of a major ocean current that brings warmth from the tropics. He also said that global warming might change this current and, if it does, most of Europe might become uninhabitable. Where are all those people going to go? Maybe to the Middle East, since it seems to be depopulating as we speak.

I've heard that about the meteorologists counting the seasons differently than the calendar does, but I don't know why they do it. If anything, it should go the other way, winter should be January, February, and March. Maybe it's just like that around the Great Lakes because all that water holds on to the summer heat and the winter cold longer than the land does. That still doesn't explain why we call the summer solstice the first day of summer and the Europeans call it midsummer. Maybe Shakespeare just couldn't fit "A First Day of Summer Night's Dream" into his iambic pentameter.