Is it just me who feels like all the seasons are running a little bit late this year?

Of course, considering fall won’t even officially start until the 21st, it’s a little too early to call it late, but it certainly feels that way. Especially after this year, when winter dragged its heels around until April and summer heat didn’t hit until July.

The heat has stuck around, though, and most of the leaves are still a bright, cheerful green. So yes, it feels like things are running late. Once autumn finally hits, given how this year is going, odds are on it running late into December itself or being squashed by an early winter.

Speaking of winter, I heard it’s supposed to be bad this year. I’m not sure how accurate that is, since all I have to go off is word of mouth and the Farmer’s Almanac long-range weather forecast promising below-normal temperatures. But I suppose that’s always all we have to go on with the weather.

It’s funny, in an age where we can predict the likeliest causes of death and one woman can crunch the numbers for a trajectory that will send a flying ball of metal close enough to Pluto to photograph it, that we still never really know for sure if the next day will be rainy or not. And we aren’t even unaware of this! Jokes about the weather people getting their predictions wrong have been around as long as weather people.

True, we have ways to narrow it down, like Doppler radar and satellites and tracking hot and cold fronts, but the most anyone can ever say for sure is that “Oh, these very full clouds will be over this area tomorrow, and may or may not actually spill over into rain.”

Once a storm hits, it’s easier to predict the effects, but they can still die out quickly. I can remember more than one day in past winters where we were assured the next day would be a snow day for sure, only to wake up to clear skies and clear driveways, or even more disappointingly, only an inch of snow.

And long-term predictions are even more subject to chance and disruption. Even if you developed an infallible algorithm to track weather patterns and predict developments down to the day and hour, anything could come along and get in the way.

Like in 1883, when the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia affected temperatures as far away as England for the next five years and disturbed global weather patterns for even longer. Who could have known all of that was going to happen?

Personally, I think weather’s rather miraculous in its unpredictability. Like I said above, we can anticipate and control so much in this world. It’s kind of humbling and wondrous to realize that we aren’t all-powerful or all-seeing. Things can go wrong. Things can be unexpected.

Of course, it is rather hard to call inaccurate predictions wondrous when they land you in the middle of a blizzard that knocks out the power without warning.

I do realize it would be nice if we could understand and prepare for anything. It would be especially nice if we could know in advance, really know, something like “this winter is going to be bad” or “autumn is going to be late, so enjoy the sun.”

Weather is unpredictable, and that is astounding – but weather is expected, and that is perhaps even more astounding.

We may quibble over the details, but an inch or a foot, it still snows at least every 12 months and goes away after a while. It always gets hot and then always cools off. Leaves turn orange and fall off the trees, inevitably, and just as inevitably come back in spring.

And we know it’s going to happen, because it’s happened just the same way every year for years far beyond counting. How about that.

— Nina Collay is a senior at Thornton Academy who can frequently be found listening to music, reading, wrestling with a heavy cello case, or poking at the keyboard of an uncooperative laptop.