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Loading...Sometimes the thought of spring and summer makes cold winter weather bearable. So it is with bad news.
I rarely hear people say their favorite season is winter. And with good reason — winter can be downright uncomfortable in more ways than one. Winter weather wreaked havoc with traveling just this morning.
From a natural resources point of view, however, winter is important in Utah. It’s the time when we get a deep snowpack in the mountains to later unleash humongous amounts of water for our reservoirs — water that is then funneled to the valleys so we can grow things and make the desert blossom.
Winter also seems to toughen up people because they have to deal with the discomfort. The good thing around here is that for every January there is a July.
But Winter is unevitable and so is bad news.
Fortunately most of the sporting events move inside for the winter and there are those who love to ski as long as there is a lodge nearby with a crackling fire to provide warmth. Regardless, most people prefer the warm feel-good summer months.
Some of the top news stories this year seemed colder and darker than a cold hard winter could possibly get, from an emotional aspect. A few top stories were senseless and tragic, including the top story in a poll of U.S. editors for the Associated Press: mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. and at a theater in Aurora, Colo.
The third top story was the natural disaster story of superstorm Sandy, which killed more than 70 people in the Caribbean and then pounded the eastern U.S. seaboard, killing at least 125 more people and causing damage calculated at well over $60 billion.
The fifth story was Libya. The Sept. 11 assault in Benghazi was widely blamed on a group with suspected links to al-Quaida. U.S. Ambassador Chris Stephens was killed and three other Americans.
The top four sports stories for the year were somewhat frigid in tone as well, with the Penn State sexual abuse scandal leading the way followed by Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace, the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal and the abundance of concussions in the NFL, ruining the lives of otherwise healthy men.
Fortunately, one of the top sports stories of the year was the London Olympics to help thaw things out a bit in a figurative sense.
In five days we’ll be into a new year. We’ll get through January, February and March and then it will warm up considerably.
Winter weather in Utah is not too lengthy and not as frigid as in some parts of the world. All of us, in one way or another, will experience some normal wintertime woes.
Fortunately, summer will be here sooner than we think.
