Meteorologically, winter doesn’t arrive for another two months.

Tell that to the thermometer that read 30 degrees this morning or the frozen leaves that crunched under my feet this morning. Even the dog, a mix of Chow and something else that is supposed to love cold weather, looked out the open door of the porch and then back up at me as if to say: “You expect me to go out on a cold morning like this?”

A few days ago, I wore a short sleeve shirt while mowing the yard and air conditioning hummed to keep the house cool. Then someone on Mother Nature’s staff looked at the calendar and thought “oh, hell, here it is October and we’ve got to cool things down.” That someone must have worked for the federal government in a previous life because we went from unseasonably warm weather in mid-October to unseasonably frigid conditions just a few days later.

So now it’s cold. Too cold. Damn cold. Yeah, I know it’s supposed to be cold in the mountains. I should. I grew up here. But a 45-degree drop in 24 hours?

The human body doesn’t react well to rapid change. We like things gradual. That means nice steady drops in temperatures and incremental changes in the weather.

So let’s get this weather thing back on track. OK? Hello? Anybody out there?

Figures.