Today is Feb. 5—Super Bowl Sunday.  Most of planet earth (self included) will be tuning in to watch the Super Bowl in a few hours.  Okay…so many of you will be tuning in to watch the commercials.  Gotta love those Super Bowl commercials.  For $3 million/30 sec. they better be good!

The Super Bowl always falls in the teeth of winter—early February.  It’s brutally cold in February.  But not this year.  What happened to winter?  Yesterday felt like early April—sunny and low 40’s.  This is N. MI…there’s green on the golf course!

I’m calling this “The winter that never was.”  Outside of a few inches here and there it’s been strangely mild.  What’s going on?  Global warming?  Right about the time you go down that road we’ll get hit with sub zero temps and crazy blizzards. For all I know I will wake up tomorrow to gale force winds and drifts so high you can’t safely pull out of your driveway.

But for now I am enjoying the winter that never was…or hasn’t come yet.  I feel bad for people who make their living on snow.  I also feel bad for those who spend lots of money fleeing winter weather—you didn’t flee much.  But all in all I’ve enjoyed this weird, wonderful winter that never was.

I’m thinking of a new Traverse City mantra.  Instead of “A view of the bay is half your pay,” how about this: “In the bay by the middle of May.”  We shall see…