My dearest winter,

Your time has come.

As March approaches its mid-point, your stone-cold stronghold is starting to lose its grip on the Northern Hemisphere. Don’t get me wrong, we had some really great times together! We went ice skating, built snowmen, drank hot cocoa. But all things must come to an end, right? This too shall pass, what goes up must come down, whatever cliché phrase you want. The point is, you gotta go.

You seemed pretty cool at first: December 21^st, 2016 didn’t seem all that bad. Obviously, you would become colder over the next few weeks, but that was an expected occurrence. It looked like the next few months would go by just fine.

The latter half of December went great: There was snow on Christmas, and New Year’s wasn’t completely unbearable. Even January wasn’t terrible. Outside of the occasional blizzard, the cold never bothered me anyway, and the few days of excessive snow got a lot of schoolchildren and few hundred college students out of class (and for that, we will always be grateful). By the end of the month, it seemed like things were going smoothly. Then February came.

Now I know you and global warming aren’t on very good terms. Sometimes Warming comes in a little too hot and then you get bitter, dropping temps below -30°F and sometimes forgetting to snow at all, but this February you seemed to let it slide. The second week, temperatures crept into the forties; I thought for sure you were going to end that trend real quick, but I guess you, Mr. Winter, were too oblivious to notice Warming’s approach. Temperatures continued to rise, and I actually started to believe you left. Once it hit 65°F on February 17^th, I was sure you were gone for good. But boy, was I wrong.

February finished on a good note, and it looked like Global Warming got the best of you. However, March proved to us that you wouldn’t give up that easily. In some fit of retaliation, you dropped the temperature 40 degrees within a week (which created an especially cranky atmosphere for all affected parties), along with ridiculously strong winds and even dropped a few tornados. Frankly, I think that last part was just a little much.

In all, I wasn’t disappointed with our 3-month affair. But when you start dropping cyclones 3 months earlier than the start of tornado season, something needs to change. Your exit time is approaching, and as much as we love your sporadic, irrational, over-the-top personality, we could definitely use a break from your antics. We really do appreciate you, we just want you to leave.

Like, now.

Sincerely,

(The majority of) the Midwest population