Thanks, David Zahrt, for your reflections on the seasons. 
 
I often speak with friends and acquaintances, when we reflect on places we've seen, of "the long hot summer" and humidity of Chicago, clearing the sidewalk of ice in Denver, not wearing a beanie when goping out for a winter date in Chicago (and having a severe cold the next day), walking/running in the sun in Philadelphia and going around the corner of a building out of the sunlight and experiencing bitter cold, and driving from L.A to Chicago on snowy roads and running off to one side into a ditch (just a few metres/yards from a petrol station), and of the Chicago blizzard of 1978/79 when cars were buried in carparks (including the one opposite 4750 North Sheridan).  And others.
 
Lately in Adelaide we've been experiencing 30 plus (Celsius).  Once I used to teach students how to do Fahrenheit-to-Celsius conversions, and the converse.  It's all metric now, even the weather reports, so I've lost the formula.  I even have to explain Fahrenheit, and other pre-metric measurements like ounces and pounds, pennies and shillings, ergs and poundals and so on, to students coming across them in their reading of novels from the 1960s and before.
 
A great Christmas to you all - whether there's snow for Bing Crosby songs, or a bush celebration with "six white boomers" (Rolf Harris), or whatever.
 
Frank Bremner