The loss of real winters is what has made my grudge with climate change personal. Winter is my favorite season. I recognize that I can say that mostly because I have the privilege to have a good experience with winter, but that’s my context. And, to be fair, I’ve enjoyed it even during the times I’ve been flat broke. I’m a transplant to central California, and a lot of millennials and older will tell you that winter here has changed dramatically. The boomers will too as long as you don’t use trigger words like “climate change”. We barely ever get fog anymore. My wife said she almost never went trick or treating because it was always raining, but my kids have never missed a Halloween yet. Supposedly it would start raining gently around the end of October and just not stop until the end of February or so; now it just stays kind of overcast and then we’ll get hella rain for a week here or a week there. It’s a la Niña year this year, though, so it’s probably going to stay dry and sunny the whole winter. A lot of the older folks in the mountains will tell you that snowfall at lower elevations is dramatically different. I work EMS in a town at around 1000 ft elevation in the Sierra’s, and the old timers in town will tell you that they used to get flat out snowed in. Now, it’s kind of a big deal if you get enough snow to make a footprint.

We keep in touch with some people in New York state and they tell us that it doesn’t even really snow in New York anymore, which is kind of blowing my mind.