Last Friday, our son gave us a tour of his workplace south of the Twin Cities. The weather was as cold and windy as the picture suggests. The whole experience confirmed Garrison Keillor’s description of early spring in Minnesota. He said if winter had a hangover, it would be March.
The last few days in central Iowa haven’t been much better. We’ve more rain than we can handle and more wind than we want. It’s been cold enough to force people back into the winter coats they gleefully stuffed in the closet when the weather grew teasingly warm for a few days. The forecast for the weekend sounds grim – rain with a little snow mixed in, which is too much snow when April’s on the horizon.
The best thing about March weather in Iowa and Minnesota is that it’s not as bad as Dakota weather. Those states have been slammed with enough rain and snow to make a non-native quit and move away. But Dakota ranchers are tough even though their weather hangover often stretches from March through May.
Why people stay there, I’ll never know. But they do, and I’m glad because thinking of their circumstances move me to gratitude for Iowa’s early spring. No matter how bad things get here, it’s worse on windblown, snowy Dakota pasture where some rancher is herding some belligerent heifer into a sheltered draw so he can stick his arm into her womb and pull a calf.
Digging out my winter coat looks pretty good compared to that.
