Wildcard Wednesday - Winter, Winter, Go Away!

So . . . as I was sitting here (yesterday) trying to come up with something to write about, I'm looking out the window right in front of me, watching yet another snow storm and thinking about what a long winter it's been.

Has this winter really been longer than usual? Or have we just become used to the relatively milder winters we've been experiencing over the last few years?

Oh, look! I found me a topic for today. :-)

Or maybe not. I started a Google search for "long winters" and the results were all about an indie rock band called The Long Winters. *sigh*

Round two was: record breaking long winters. The results were . . . pretty much the same.

Clearly I am lacking in Googling skills. Okay, one more time. Let's try: longest winter on record.

Okay, first we have to wait for the internet to come back up. I'm not sure why our connection's been so spotty lately, but it's really beginning to bug the crap out of me.

Anyway, this search ended up including "coldest" winters on record as well, but at this point I wasn't going to quibble. ;-)

According to the Toronto Star, in 1912 we have a record breaking winter during which Lake Ontario and Lake Superior froze solid. What makes this so note worthy is not so much the excessive cold, but the consistent cold.

The Chicago weather service claims that the winter of 1903 is actually the coldest on record, but they don't say how cold it was, but did say it was the snowiest as well. They claim 1912 was the second coldest winter on record.

The New York Times claims the coldest winter was in 1918, during which the temperature averaged ten degrees below normal.

And just to make me feel silly for even considering that this winter was a bad one, TIME wants us to believe than on average, January wasn't as cold as we thought it was. Really TIME?

Next I stumbled across a book entitled, Coldest Winter Ever, by Sister Souljah, and I pretty much gave up. I'm sure the information I seek is out there, it's just a matter of finding it.

The Long Winters
The Commander Thinks Aloud