I have written about weather in this space before, mainly complaining, whining, carping and mad about the awful weather. Specifically, our weather here in Minnesota.

I want to apologize for that, and say that maybe, just maybe, I was wrong.

After a rough start, our winter has kind of straightened out. I mean, we were getting dumped on with snowstorm after snowstorm. And ice and snow at the same time. And really cold temperatures.

It started way back in October of last year, and just kept getting worse. I mean, how many Christmas celebrations were postponed or canceled?

However, it has been pretty decent lately, weatherwise. Of course, only in Minnesota can you have a string of days where the temperatures break freezing and hit the upper 30s for a few days in a row and we call it a heat wave.

Now, I am fully aware it is just getting near the middle of February and we have a lot more winter to go. In fact, that groundhog guy saw his shadow in Pennsylvania on Feb. 2, and that means six more weeks of winter and no early spring.

For us in Minnesota, however, having six more weeks of winter after Feb. 2, is actually considered an early spring! We hope for spring in March but it is usually April. And I remember a snowstorm with a foot of snow on May Day, May 1, a few years ago.

But I digress.

My point is maybe we don’t actually have it so bad here in good old Minnesota. Yes, we get snow, freezing temps, dangerous wind chills and blizzards, but that is just a normal winter here.

Perhaps you have noticed the weather around the rest of the country. It has been bad, way worse than usual, and they are just not used to it.

California, where my son, Nate, lives, has been hit with wave after wave of rain storms. They even had a tornado spotted. Hillsides and roads have washed away.

Just a little ways from where he lives, in the Sierra Nevada mountains, they are measuring their snowfall in feet, not inches. Mammoth Mountain in the Central Sierra Nevadas has had 20 feet of snow since November 2022. Lake Tahoe area averages 33 feet.

I guess I won’t whine next time I have to fire up the snowblower.

Across the south, there has been wave after wave of powerful thunderstorms, including a whole lot of tornadoes. They hit Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee, the most tornadoes in January in many cases.

My brother is spending the winter in Panama City, Florida, in the panhandle of Florida. While they have had some nice days, they have had a lot of rainy ones, and plenty of storms passing through. There is another one there this weekend.

Most of the storms in the South then travel up the East Coast and nail those states with rain, snow and ice.

And, of course, we have heard a lot about the lake effect snow in the Buffalo, New York, area, as well as the rest of New England.

So maybe we don’t have it so bad. It is nothing we can’t handle. Our streets and highways get cleared pretty quickly after a snowstorm. We got through having a coating of ice. We drive slower and we walk like little old ladies on slick sidewalks.

I’m happy that after a few more days of temps in the upper 30s I might finally see bare concrete on my sidewalks and driveway.

We have not had major multi-vehicle pileups due to weather conditions like so many other places have. We know how to drive in snow and on slick roads, for the most part anyway.

Sure, there are some accidents, and people slide into the ditch once in a while. And we do have to take it easy when we walk, and we do have to remember to bundle up on those frigid way below zero days.

But is it really as bad as I have made it out to be?

Maybe life in Minnesota is pretty sweet, even in the winter. And as we always like to say here in Minnesota, “It could be worse.”

I guess it could be. We don’t get 33 feet of snow or tornadoes in January. No earthquakes or volcanoes either, for that matter.

So, at least for now, I am promising no more complaining about the weather. I am going to embrace it.

Now, excuse me, I have a date to go snowshoeing in Steinberg Park. I am kind of hoping for a coating of fresh snow….

Good grief! I can’t believe I just said that.