Fimbulvinter?

Ice fishermen on Keweenaw Bay near the L'Anse waterfront, April 18

They're still ice fishing on Keweenaw Bay, they're predicting about a foot of snow is going to fall locally during the next 24 hours, and I'm thinking I'll celebrate my birthday (15 days away at this point) by digging out the red wax and going skiing. A friend keeps channeling Laura Ingalls Wilder and muttering about The Long Winter. Personally, given the way things seem to be going in general with the world, I'm voting for this being a sign of the fimbulvinter, the prelude to Ragnarok. Not actually likely, but at this point a battle between the gods and the giants strikes me as more interesting than the prospect of another month of slush and mud.

We've had Springs like this one before, of course. It's just been awhile. The last one I recall clearly was 1996. That was the year we had close to 3 feet of snow fall during the last week of March, it kept snowing the nasty, wet, slushy kind of snow well into April, and the driveway was such a sea of mud we parked out on the county road and walked in for most of May. The Older Daughter decided to surprise me with two mountain ash saplings. She arrived thinking we'd be able to plant them immediately and discovered the snow was still knee deep in the yard where they'd go.

The good news is that the trees did eventually get planted. That gives a person hope that although it may be a late Spring it should get here eventually.