Although many in my family would dispute this assertion, I really am a good-natured guy.  I am rarely in a bad mood.  But winter puts me in a horrible mood.

It's not SAD, as you might suspect. My mood is not a result of one of those Seasonal Affective Disorders.  No, I'm not irritable because of light deprivation. What really frosts me is that winters around here are more like early spring, these days.  Right now, I'm sitting here looking out the window at a cold rain and thinking how great it would be if this were snow. 

And, it's not just that there's no snow. It's that we're always right on the line. Of all the spots on earth to live, I have to live right on the rain/snow line. The other day, when we got rain, it snowed just a few miles up the road. Sometimes it comes so close that there's snow in Goochland and cold rain, here in Henrico.

Have you ever noticed how often the local weathermen will tell us that Interstates 94 and 64 are the dividing lines? It's like the Interstate highway system, somehow, influences weather patterns, and that makes me testy, too.

And, it's not even that we're right on the line that upsets me. It's more that every time some weather system heads this way, the weather forecasters will go on TV and promise us that it will turn to snow.  I can remember numerous times when we're told that there is no chance it won't snow. I used to stay up all night staring out the window wondering where that guaranteed snow is.  

In pre-Internet days, I'd call the automated weather number on the phone every hour to see if the forecast had changed, and to make sure that the temperature wasn't going up.  I'm not sure why I love snow so much, but I don't think it's so wrong to love a snow bank...or a drift, or even a couple of inches. That's so much nicer than cold rain.

As if faulty forecasts from TV meteorologists weren't enough, now there's this guy from wxrisk.com. He gets paid to provide businesses with forecasts.  He's bound to be living from hand to mouth, considering his success. Last winter he kept getting on Facebook and promising blizzards. He must have promised a dozen, and what did we get? Yep, cold rain.

That's what puts me in a bad mood.  That, and those snow-hating weathermen who want you to congratulate them for a being wrong. "Oh boy," they'll chortle. "We didn't get that snow we were expecting. Aren't we lucky?"  The more they celebrate all that good luck, the worse my mood. 

I was promised (by Dave Tolleson of wxrisk) that we'd have snow next week. And, for a moment, there I got real excited.  

But, I'm not going to wax the sled and I'm not putting my galoshes on, yet. Because the truth is, I have no interest in bundling up, donning my mittens,  and going out to play in the cold rain.