I have traveled relatively widely in this great country, and relatively narrowly in the world at large. But I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere where somebody didn’t tell me, “The thing about living around here is, if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”

We say it in Minnesota too, but the joke fits other places better. Southwestern Alaska, where I spent one summer back before the Civil War, was the place where I noticed it most. The Alaska sky never had just one weather going on. It was sunny over here, but stormy over there. And something different a half an hour later.

However, Alaska has no thunderstorms (this is odd but true). I’m not sure that doesn’t disqualify them on a technicality.

There are doubtless places where the old gag isn’t true. San Diego comes to mind. And no doubt sub-Saharan Africa is hot and dry for long stretches at a time.

I say all this as preface to my account of yesterday’s weather in Minnesota. It was scripted by Terry Gilliam, I think. He’s a Minnesotan, after all.

I told you about the snow storm we had last weekend. Nothing very odd about that – though the pattern in recent years has been for real winter weather to come on slow. The first few snowfalls of the years have under-delivered. But this one had reason to be proud of itself. It lived up to old men’s childhood memories.

The next few days were warmer, and quite a lot of the snow melted away, leaving the ground patterned like an Appaloosa’s hindquarters. The temperature soared into the 50s yesterday, and as night fell we heard thunder. A genuine thunderstorm, in the middle off December. A great writer (it was me) once wrote, in The Year of the Warrior, “We had thunderstorms in February, which is a joyless thing.” Or words to that effect. There was much profound truth in that line.

And then winter came rushing back. High winds had been promised, and they showed up on schedule, Temperatures plunged. This morning when I went to the gym, it was in the 20s. The glitch in the Matrix had passed. The rubber band had snapped back. Thor, disturbed from his sleep, had turned over and gone back to his snoring.

People to our southeast are still recovering from tornadoes the other day, so it would be ridiculous for me to complain. But the day was remarkable, memorable, and worth chronicling.

I’m writing it down here because I’m sure I’ll forget.

In other news, I got a nice translating job today, which should take maybe three days to finish and bring in a decent pay day.

But not if I don’t stop jawing about the weather and get back to work.