Old Man Winter has the last laugh

I really don’t like to be that person who complains about the weather, but for crying out loud (and we are all crying out loud), spring, why hast thou forsaken us?

The only consolation that makes snowstorms in April somewhat bearable is that we are not alone in this bleak debacle. Wide swaths of the country are still white and longing for those first signs of life — the tulip buds, daffodils, even those first tender shoots of rhubarb and plucky dandelions that make us forget what has been bestowed upon us month after month after month.

In Ortonville, Minnesota, a funny video of a guy golfing on 6 inches of snow in shorts and a T-shirt went viral. Even through the wind made it feel like 8 below, he waltzed around the course, going from hole to hole as if it were utterly natural behavior.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote about one of the coldest Twins home openers this week, topped with a clever headline: “At Twins opener, it’s buy me some parkas and trappers hats.”

“More than 75 Twins employees — from part-timers in the call center to team president — shoveled, shoveled and shoveled some more to clear the field and seats of a record-setting snowfall in time for Thursday’s home opener against Seattle,” the Star Tribune reported, adding, “This may be the most unseasonable start to the baseball season since the outdoor downtown stadium opened in 2010. There’s been snow, there’s been cold, but there hasn’t been an April like this.”

I’ve found myself feeling a little “Schadenfreude” toward my friends who have become winter “snowbirds.” Schadenfreude is a German word that means pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune.

One of my high-school girlfriends who now winters in the Dominican Republic was whining on Facebook about returning to find their home still deep in snow. Cry me a river. She spent all winter posting photos of endless sunsets and beach romps, and now has the audacity to complain because her spring flowers aren’t up? I’m not having it.

Even the eastern U.S. is getting hammered by this unusually cold April weather. On Saturday abnormally cold weather was expected to extend from Bismarck, North Dakota, to Baltimore. That’s a pretty wide swath for what one meteorologist on Twitter called a “ridiculous late season arctic outbreak.”

According to a weather story in The Washington Post, wind chills were predicted to plunge below zero from Minneapolis to Billings. In the north-central part of the U.S. on Friday temperatures fell as much as 30 degrees below normal.

So it’s not only Northwest Montana that’s getting kicked in the shins by Old Man Winter. The battle’s over for me, though; I’m crying uncle. Now go away Old Man, and let us have our spring.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.