Winter can be over now. Really.

I should start by saying, in my own defense, that I'm not a winter wimp. What I am is a native New Englander who lived briefly, as a toddler, in southern California before Mom and Dad came to their senses and moved back east, settling in the (then) small town where I have lived ever since. As a child and into my early teen years, I skied both recreationally and competitively, went skating in indoor rinks and on ponds, and played in the snow.

And when I was a kid, did we have weather! You probably don't understand what that means unless you live in New England or maybe Minnesota, so I'll give a couple examples. One year, probably around 1970 or so, we had so much snow that the local ski area still had full cover in the beginning of May. We're not talking the lofty Rockies here; this was a hill down the street. But there they were, people coming down the slopes in shorts and T-shirts.

During one particular snow storm, on a holiday that escapes my recollection now, my father had to find an alternate route home from my grandparents' house because the interstate was shut down by snowdrifts.

Then there was the blizzard of '78, the mother of all snow storms, which happened 25 years ago this week. Here we call storms like that Nor'easters, from the direction the winds come from, bringing with them bands of blinding snow formed from moisture picked up over the Atlantic. The '78 storm, the intensity of which forecasters failed to predict, paralyzed eastern Massachusetts for days. In my town, we had almost four feet of snow, on top of nearly two already on the ground from previous smaller storms. Thousands of cars were stranded and a couple hundred people died, including one poor soul who froze to death in his car on an exit ramp which, he obviously didn't realize, was just the other side of a clump of trees from several houses.

Our next-door neighbor snowshoed to the corner market for milk and bread, and the doctor across the street cross-country skied to work in the next city. We got a whole week off from school. On the third day after the snow ended, I walked a mile or so to my friend's house down the middle of an ordinarily busy main route because non-emergency vehicles were still banned from the public roadways.

My point, of course, is that I have winter-tolerance credentials: I shovel my own snow, know how to drive in several inches of snow/slush/ice, and keep a sand bucket in my trunk from September until May just in case I get stuck. But for this year, I can't take any more.

Start with the cold snap (under 10 degrees Fahrenheit) that started before Christmas, lasted through most of January, and after a brief respite returned this week. I've lost track of how many times it has snowed or how much has fallen, and I can't go outside with a yardstick and measure because a lot of it what was on the ground melted during last week's heat wave (low 30s) and rain. But it's been a lot. And for some reason, I live in a little pocket that, possibly due to altitude, seems to get more accumulation than the surrounding towns.

Last night, the weather bureau was forecasting an inch of snow for Central Massachusetts. By early afternoon, with more than 7 inches already on the ground and white-out conditions (people from Rochester, New York know what that means), the weather bureau revised their forecast... to 2 inches.

Sigh.

In 20 days (but who's counting?) I get on a jet airliner bound for Florida, where I'll bask in the sun watching spring training baseball. I'd like to think that when I come back, in early March, spring will have found its way north. But I know better. I still remember the year when I was in college that my parents lost a large maple tree in their back yard from the wet, weighty snow that clung to the branches and leaves. Yes, I said leaves. It was the beginning of May. The trunk split in three right down the middle. I had never seen anything like it.

I know I shouldn't complain. Heavy snowfall in the winter means a better spring melt and less chance of summer drought. And a bad winter makes my favorite season, spring, that much more enjoyable. But come on. It can be over now.

Enough is enough.