This just in from Environment Canada: No more normal weather. Ever.

"Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists"

Kelvin Throop

T.V. viewing and vegetable farming are mutually exclusive pursuits throughout much of the year.

Very much like writing this blog and vegetable farming, as I've discovered.

That said, I had the luxury of watching the six o'clock news the other evening, followed at seven by a show dedicated to Hollywood types, most of whom I had never heard of.

The common thread seemed to be the sheer magnitude of their assorted dysfunctions. Apparently the attraction of these human train wrecks,delivered in a slick on-air package, is not a niche market: we are promised a whole new expanded playlist of bad behavior come the new year.

Weather forecasters have decided to take a similar approach. Gone are the days of Farmers' Almanacs (which rely on rolling averages) and their bland predictions of a "normal "season ahead. Gone too are a lot of local "father-knows-best" type weather folks. They seem to have been replaced by type A auctioneers halfway through their second six-pack of Red Bull.

Nobody wants to hear about Lindsay Lohan behaving herself: wearing sensible shoes and a house dress and running a church bake sale. Apparently, nobody wants to hear about Mother Nature behaving herself, either.

Nope, Environment Canada has decided to swing for the fences,calling for the mother of all winters for 2010-2011. This forecast is hot on the heels of calls for a "hot, dry summer", made back in early May.

Environment Canada is still high-fiving each other for their accuracy in predicting a hot summer, but let's back up a minute here: they called for a hot dry summer.

It was indeed hot, but rainfall was normal throughout the vast majority of the province.

What this means is that E.C. only got it half right.

What would happen in a world where accountants only got it right half of the time?

Or plastic surgeons?

You'd have an awful lot of funny looking people getting audited,that's what.

Much and all as we have gangs of roving T.V. reporters looking for mudslides,tsunamis, major earthquakes, massive forest fires and the like, the fact remains that Southern Ontario is blessed with an abundance of normal weather.

Although we occasionally suffer from widespread drought or rainfall, it is seldom on the scale of the disasters from around the world we see on the news most evenings.

And what may make for lousy "details at 6" makes us very lucky indeed.