Officially it's all of two weeks long. Not the season but the "weather".
It gets cool in waves then locks in with the weather that the snowbirds love sometime around thanksgiving, give or take a month I guess.
Highs around 80. Lows around 60.
Or So.
Then That Week In February hits. That Week is usually the second week of February. It's the coldest week of the Northern Hemisphere in most places, but your own neighborhood may vary.
Some time in January we'd take the comforter out since the windows here are leaky, and the houses are designed for keeping the breezes flowing and letting the heat out instead of keeping the house one temperature. It would get used on the random cold night you wake up at 2AM when the bedroom is too cold. Then you'd fold it back up and put it on the stand or the table next to the bed and wait until the next cold night.
For That Week, you'd use it every night, shivering in what passes for frigid weather here. It hit 39 one morning, that's cold enough for everyone to be bringing out their coldest weather clothes that they moved down here with 10 or 20 years ago. Since styles changed in the meantime, you can take a stab at when someone moved by looking at their winter clothes.
For the record, I have three leather jackets, the oldest I bought in the early 1990s. Luckily leather bomber jacket styles don't change much.
Or so I tell myself.
After that week passes, the comforter goes back to the table next to the bed. You start hearing stories from your friends and family Up North that the snow is just beginning to melt. Now you consider whether it's time to put the comforter away for the winter after you give it that last Hot Wash in Super Hot. It will go in the Cedar Chest or the suitcase that you moved down here with and can't use anymore since the airlines are hell to deal with and it weighs too much to use anyway. Nobody wants to carry those big rigid suitcases anymore and the people at the airport will break into it in the name of national security in order to steal the things you hid in there anyway.
What they're doing with all those odd pairs of socks and underwear, I have no idea.
But it seems like it's time. Time to wash the comforters. The weather is still beautiful but now the highs are creeping up so the forecasts are at 80 instead of 76 as a high.
The next time that Aunt Patty complains about the snow back in Jersey, just tell her that Winter's Peaked and the Comforter's been washed. She won't understand, but it will give you a smile.
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