Colonie

I come to you today with a confession: I love winter.

I hesitate to say that. I fear my confession will color your view of everything I say or write, especially during this unusually rugged winter. I can hear you now: "This bozo loves the cold and snow, so I will no longer trust his judgment."

But I won't deny it. I love the clarity of the sky on a bitter night. I love a snowstorm's special silence. I love a frozen lake. I love snowy woods.

For me, the toughest thing about winter isn't the snow and cold. It's listening to endless complaining about the snow and cold. It's hard to love something that everybody hates — Michael Bolton fans have my sympathy — so I usually give up trying to defend the season by January.

What's the point?

But now that we're nearing the end — spring begins, officially, in just 16 days — I have a few things to get off my chest, annoyances that have dulled even my appreciation for the best winter in recent memory.

I'll start with an obvious one: It wasn't Timmy, LeBron, Natasha or (ugh) Titan that dumped snow on your lawn. Snowstorms do not and should not have names.

The Weather Channel started this little anthropomorphism effort last winter, a handy tool for making winter seem more menacing. "Seven inches of snow possible Tuesday" has thus been replaced by "The Wrath of Titan" and "90 Million in Path of Titan."

And, yes, those are real-life headlines from The Weather Channel's website on Monday.

Which brings me to my next, related annoyance: snowstorm hype.

This winter, I've heard news networks describe run-of-the-mill snowstorms with terms like devastating, deadly and disastrous, among other over-the-top terms. Actually, the word "disaster" is routinely applied to all sorts of events that are not, in fact, disasters.

Here's one recent example: When FedEx, Amazon and UPS failed to deliver packages by Dec. 25, it was frequently called the "Delivery Disaster."

No, no, no. A disaster is when a tidal wave crashes into a city or when an exploding train destroys a town. I'm sorry, but late Christmas gifts are an inconvenience, and only people who haven't experienced an actual disaster would confuse the two.

My third annoyance: Snow-related death counts.

Whenever we get a good snowstorm, you'll hear that "the storm is being blamed for X number of deaths." This, I submit, is ludicrous.

OK, there's no denying that snow causes people to crash cars or keel over shoveling — unfortunate fatalities that wouldn't happen without a storm. But it's also true that all weather has potentially lethal consequences.

Imagine the first glorious day of spring, weather so wonderfully warm that people in cities across the Northeast pour into the streets. A certain number of those people, I'm sorry to say, will be run over by trucks.

Now, those deaths wouldn't have happened if the weather was crummy enough to keep people inside. But does anybody say, "This beautiful weather is being blamed for the deaths of 18 people across the Northeast?"

Of course not.

Onto my next annoyance, caused by anyone — Fox News anchors, Facebook friends, raving sidewalk lunatics — who says this rugged winter proves that global warming is a big, fat hoax.

It does no such thing.

More Information Contact Chris Churchill at 518-454-5700 or email cchurchill@timesunion.com See More Collapse

See, it's called "global" warming for a reason, and a cold season on one section of the planet says little about the bigger picture. In fact, the worldwide temperature in January was the fourth-warmest on record and the warmest overall since 2007.

We here in the Northeast are having a terrifically old-fashioned winter, but much of the rest of the world is experiencing unusual warmth. What's worse, long-term climate trends are extraordinarily depressing for those of us who enjoy winter, and that alone is reason to squeeze enjoyment from this one.

That doesn't mean that I won't be happy when the weather warms. (I can't wait to get the garden going.) Yet I don't think you can truly appreciate spring without winter. One means nothing without the other.

But if you just can't find beauty in our ongoing winter, consider this wisdom from Dolly Parton: "If you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain."

In case that quote doesn't do it for you, I'll end with one attributed to Albert Camus.

"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible spring," he said. "And that makes me happy."

cchurchill@timesunion.com • 518-454-5700 • @chris_churchill