Global warming winter

The streets darken at rush hour then gain some warmth as Christmas lights hum to life, but it isn't enough. I took a festive back route to work today. For all the lights draped in trees, windowsills and on wide porches, they didn't feel right.

Without snow to surround them, they look misplaced. The background photo on my parents' computer shows a winter from the mid 1990s, when my mother's plastic snowman, Santa, reindeer and elves stood sturdy against the Lake Effect winds due to the snow mounded around them.

Down here, on soggy green lawns, a stiff breeze dumps the Christmas parade into the mud.

The mansions on Griggs Reservoir glowed on Christmas Eve. Without ice or snow, their reflections just brooded across lethargic ripples in the water.

Diminished Christmas lights aren't the only symptom of winter's absence. I wouldn't mind racing down a sledding hill on a lunch tray or bundling up for a walk along the Olentangy. Those are pipe dreams this year.

With one substantial snowfall (no one from Northeast Ohio considers one powdery inch a real snowstorm, thought), we already missed a White Christmas, so now I wonder whether any part of this winter will go white. Forecasts show 50-degree days and scattered rain for the next week (the monster storms hitting Colorado cannot cope with Ohio's temperatures).

I know too little about global warming or El Nino to name them as suspects. But something has stolen our winters, and I'd like them back, even with a single storm.