Winter

* Please note posts for December 20 - January 2nd celebrate the season! Reeves' AWBOD's prompts resume Jan 3rd.



Captain Obvious here! Winter in New York is, like, really winter.

(Side note: I feel the need to put a disclaimer here for those [ahem, Jodi] who have lived in places that crush New York's winter—aka most of Canada, Alaska, Siberia, Antartica, you get the picture—for you, this will read very silly. However, my point still stands).

Winter here is the way it looks in movies, the way it's taught in school (bare trees, cut-out snowflakes!), the way you can mark memories by what the weather was like outside down to the fiscal quarter. In the northeast, a year really feels like a year.

On the west coast, a year is basically a long stretch of a singular season, with only the smallest of deviations. For example, winter in southern California is uncomfortably hot, only to crank up to blazingly hot in the summer. In the Pacific Northwest, a pleasantly cool and sometimes wet summer turns into a grey and rainy winter, where your only weather protection might be an anorak and a pair of duck boots (most folks don't even bother taking off their sandals. Or putting on pants, for that matter).

Here I get to bundle up with proper hats and mittens, experience (and dread) long stretches of blistering cold, fight ice storms and snow storms, even blizzards—and it's a wild ride. But I really love being able to measure a year with nature's own yardstick. I like having an end—to whatever it is I'm feeling—in sight. Winter is winter in New York, and it's the winter-iest thing I know.

* Please note posts for December 20 - January 2nd celebrate the season! Reeves' AWBOD's prompts resume Jan 3rd.