As winters get milder,

[rodeodance]

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/index.php?ntid=72359

As winters get milder, let's speak up on warming

By Scott Spoolman

When I was young, the sound of winter winds howling at night made me glad to be safe and warm. Yet I revered the wind and what it proclaimed the ferocious grip of winter just outside the window.

I grew up in the 1960s and '70s in northwestern Wisconsin where temperatures could plunge to minus 40 degrees. Schools would close for the cold or for frequent blizzards. Snow piled up throughout the season, often well into March.

We loved winter with its unique sports and other challenges. One sub-zero night under a full moon, I hiked up to a high wooded ridge behind our house. There I saw much of my hometown asleep in its valley beneath a spray of stars. Moonlight glinted off icy tree branches. The night was utterly silent. I'll never forget that sight my little town hibernating in the dead of winter.

Thirty years later, one mid-winter night after putting my children to bed in my parents' home, I walked out the back door and took a breath of moist air. Pulling up my hood, I cursed the clouded sky. Inside, my kids were hearing not a howling blizzard thrashing the window, but raindrops tapping on the pane.

[WePurrsevere]

1. Right now I both miss the REAL Winters & am thankful for the mild w/ Oil

prices for heating our home so high (and our money so low) not to mention the fact that we haven't had to pay out to be plowed out more then once so far although I know there will probably be another time or two before we really have Spring up here. Oddly enough, as someone who is concerned for our environment and our Earth Mother, I also feel guilty for feeling relieved that, although it's back to freezing cold now, it's been downright warm throughout January.

We live in Northern NY and I grew up in the Capital District area. Many of my Winter memories are wonderufl ones much as the writer of the article described. My husband and I are not ones who want to move to warmer climates because, although we don't *do* winter sports, we enjoy the glittering snow and the sun glistening off of bare "crystal" trees. We also recognize that the snow is Mother Nature's insulator for plants asleep in the earth and in an odd way for us as well.

[MichiganVote]

2. Don't tell me global warming doesn't exist--Michigan winters have

drastically changed. Esp. this year. I too recall those Jack Frost eveings, winds, snow piled 5 feet or more deep and the spin of tires as cars got stuck. So many sights and sounds are gone. Now, we end up with ice, more than snow and it can actually be more dangerous to drive.

Ice skating, skiing, ice fishing, going, going, gone...