As I write this at about 1:30 p.m. Monday, the outside temperature recorded on The Aegis Weather Station in downtown Bel Air is 70 degrees Fahrenheit, just five degrees lower than the temperature inside our newsroom. The sun is shining. It's a beautiful spring day, only it's Jan. 7, not May 7.
In this part of the world, we are used to wild fluctuations in temperatures and quick changes in the weather. Heck, six days ago, everyone was complaining about how cold it had gotten. I recall passing one of those outdoor temperature signs by the self-storage complex on Route 1 in Fallston early last Wednesday morning and it read 15 degrees.
I don't intend this posting to initiate a debate on global warming. I've heard the arguments on both sides, and I have watched "An Inconvenient Truth" twice. My own experiences lead me to believe there has been climate change in my lifetime; however, I'm not ready to say it's a result of greenhouse gases, although some of those arguments are certainly compelling.
But, not everything one can remember from the past necessarily builds this case.
I do know, from looking back at The Aegis from Thursday, Jan. 9, 1958, that Harford County was in the midst of a cold snap, one that sent people flocking to local ponds to ice skate. The paper ran a front page photograph of Bynum Pond chock full of skaters on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 5, with the caption reading in part: "Skaters and spectators congregated at the local pond in such large numbers all parking space was utilized and in addition both sides of the Churchville Road were occupied by cars for several hundred yards.
A few years ago, I wrote a column lamenting the demise of outdoor ice skating in Harford County. I wasn't here in 1958, but in Delaware County, Pa., where I grew up about 75 miles north of here, we always looked forward to the ice skating season, which in the 1950s and 1960s usually ran from anytime in mid-December until early to mid-March.
I was fortunate to live during my teenage years in a house which had a large reservoir lake in the back yard, so I did a lot of outdoor ice skating. These days, however, any ice skating in Harford County is mostly confined to Ice World in Abingdon, which is a really fine place to skate, but it's not the same as going out to a local pond, building a bonfire and meeting all your friends, as well as meeting new ones. Our lake on Crum Creek outside Media, Pa., was a big draw for skating for miles and miles around, the way I'm sure Bynum Pond was 40 or 50 years ago.
To be fair, I did a little additional checking. In the editions of The Aegis from Jan. 6 and Jan. 13, 1983, 25 years ago, there was no mention of any unusual weather. At that time, we ran a weekly weather update provided by a local young man, Shane Mayor, who I believe was doing this as a scout or school project.
Shane's entry for Wednesday, Jan. 5, 1983, gave the high and low temperatures at 38 and 24 degrees, with .41 of an inch of precipitation and variable winds peaking at nine miles an hour. On Thursday, Jan. 6, the temperature ranges were 47 and 25 degrees, with trace amounts of precipitation and winds from the northwest peaking at 21 miles an hour. By Friday, Jan. 7, the high temperature for the day rose to 57 degrees with a low of 25 degrees, no precipitation and winds from the northwest peaking at 28 miles an hour. The highs on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9, were 45 and 40 degrees, respectively.
Obviously, nobody was ice skating outdoors in Harford County 25 years ago this week, but many of you will also remember we were barely a month away from one of the biggest snowstorms in the county's history. I also recall that on Jan. 4, 2007, I attended a funeral in Northwest Washington near the National Cathedral, and the temperature that day must have been in the 70s, because it was great weather for strolling along Wisconsin Avenue.
As for the first full week of January 2008, it's great to be a skateboarder, hiker or roller or inline skater, and, judging from the long line of pickups and pickups with trailers waiting to get into the Harford Waste Disposal Center at Scarboro Saturday afternoon, last weekend was a fine time for some post-holiday, pre-spring cleaning.
As for global warming, I shouldn't complain about 70 degrees on Jan. 7 whatever the cause. As much as I liked ice skating as a teenager, I am at the point in life where every seasonable day in the winter is just one less day to be concerned about snow, icy roads or bone chilling temperatures — especially with heating oil selling well above $3 a gallon.
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