I was almost five years old when the great blizzard of 1947 hit southern Saskatchewan. After it was over my mother took a photo of me standing on top of what must have been an almost 10 metre snowdrift. Our driveway passed through multiple rows of trees and that snowdrift fully blocked it. A passenger train was almost buried a few miles away near Mossbank. The temperature dropped to -60° Celsius.

I was 32 when the flood hit Moose Jaw in 1974. Many houses in low-lying areas were flooded up to the eaves. A creek bed that was dry most of the year and never saw much water even during spring runoff became a rushing torrent that cut the city in half, tearing up pavement in places.

I have seen other blizzards, other floods, other cold snaps, and heat waves with temperatures up to 40° Celsius. I have seen powerful winds, dust storms, tornadoes, hail storms, and some pretty wild thunderstorms. I have survived them all and still find Saskatchewan to be a pretty good place to live. These extremes are not an everyday occurrence, not even every year.

But I have noticed that lately the weather prophets are warning of a weather apocalypse pretty much every other day. These prophecies are almost never fulfilled. Could this propensity for constantly seeing a coming apocalypse have something to do with that particular government department now bearing the name of Environment and Climate Change Canada?

I have seen climate change all my life. I remember a summer in my school days when my mother covered our windows with sheets to minimize the infiltration of blowing dust. I remember another summer when the highway ditches were always full of water. When my wife and I moved back to Saskatchewan in 1998, the trees were fully leafed out by May 15. This year it looks like they will finally reach that stage by May 31.

After watching changing seasons for 84 years I have concluded that there is no such thing as normal weather. There are only averages, and those averages have no prophetic power. Of course we like to talk about the weather, but do we really have to worry about it? I don’t want to become any more of a hermit than I am already, so I think the best thing to do is ignore the doom and gloom forecasts and go out and try to enjoy the day.