That's about as oxymoronic as it gets, I suspect, but in fact it fits.
We are experiencing a very very weird winter. As I may have gone on about at some length, Csikszereda is a very cold place. Temperatures in January are regularly below -20 and in some years down as low as -30 and below. By this time of the year, we should be waist deep in snow and wrapped up like michelin men. But we are not because we are in the middle of what ought to be termed a massive heatwave. It won't be termed a heatwave of course, because temperatures of +3 are not really what one would call a heatwave. But in terms of comparison with the norm, we must be at least 10 degrees over the average, and possibly more. Which is a heatwave, of sorts anyway.
So, what to call this extreme mildness? The US media has gone way over the top with these kind of things of late, with this year's Polar Vortex beating last year's Perfect Storm and Snowmageddon, so I think we need a term for this year's incredible bout of mild and unusually bearable weather.
Some possibilities:
To be serious for a moment, it is having some serious effects on the local economy, as at this time of year there is usually a lot of snow (and this year there is precisely none). The vast majority of the local ski runs don't have any snow making equipment so they have already effectively lost half their season (which typically runs December to March - we're now in mid January and they haven't even been able to open yet). Then of course there is the fear of the possibility of a drought later in the year - since there has been basically no precipitation of any kind since October, we could be in some trouble later on down the line.
We are experiencing a very very weird winter. As I may have gone on about at some length, Csikszereda is a very cold place. Temperatures in January are regularly below -20 and in some years down as low as -30 and below. By this time of the year, we should be waist deep in snow and wrapped up like michelin men. But we are not because we are in the middle of what ought to be termed a massive heatwave. It won't be termed a heatwave of course, because temperatures of +3 are not really what one would call a heatwave. But in terms of comparison with the norm, we must be at least 10 degrees over the average, and possibly more. Which is a heatwave, of sorts anyway.
So, what to call this extreme mildness? The US media has gone way over the top with these kind of things of late, with this year's Polar Vortex beating last year's Perfect Storm and Snowmageddon, so I think we need a term for this year's incredible bout of mild and unusually bearable weather.
Some possibilities:
- Fair-to-middlingmageddon
- The Great 2014 Carnage of Tolerability
- The Four Horseman of the not-that-parky
- Temperataclysm
- Clement Void
- Actually-pretty-comfortable-to-be-honest-pocalypse
To be serious for a moment, it is having some serious effects on the local economy, as at this time of year there is usually a lot of snow (and this year there is precisely none). The vast majority of the local ski runs don't have any snow making equipment so they have already effectively lost half their season (which typically runs December to March - we're now in mid January and they haven't even been able to open yet). Then of course there is the fear of the possibility of a drought later in the year - since there has been basically no precipitation of any kind since October, we could be in some trouble later on down the line.
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