Snow away

With an early morning shower and mid-60s temperatures yesterday, and the same pattern expected for today it may be safe to say that winter is over, although I hope I'm not speaking too soon. It's not March 21 yet, and the Vernal Equinox has not yet arrived, so its still technically Winter for about ten more days... but Spring is definitely in the air.

The weather we've had over the past week, actually, has caused the very few remnants of snow that were left to slowly disappear. It hasn't snowed here in weeks, but the ground temperatures mixed with lower nighttime temperatures have allowed some very minute patches of snow to stick around up until yesterday - when I noticed my last one on a morning walk with Jake during that downpour I mentioned. It is nice to have it gone though and finally see again what the grass and earth below look like... I had almost forgotten. But this is Chicago and Mother Nature has been known to be a tricky soul, so I would not be surprised if we saw at least one more snowfall in this early part of 2010 (read: twenty-ten), even if it does not stick, per se.

So with that I guess I have survived through my first official Chicago winter (as a resident, obviously, since I've visited in previous years during winter). In all honesty, it was a tiny bit different than what I'm used to, but not really much of a paradigm departure from the StL winters. There was a little more snow more often and the temperatures were from 5 to 10 degrees lower on any given day (actually higher on a rare few days!), but it was somewhat comparable and I handled it - and am confident I can handle it moving forward. I was even able to work a lot throughout the winter, which is quite rare, so I was happy that the moderate amount of snowfall and coldness does not shut people down around here like it does in other parts of the country....

Here's to Spring... which means baseball season! Oh yeah, did I mention?? GO CARDS!!!