Not to brag, Aaron Natti said, but he wears shorts all winter, no matter how low the temperature or how deep the snow. In fact, the more miserable the conditions, the better. Rugged is his brand. He breaks character only for funerals, weddings, and when his boss at the radio station forces him. But alas, these past two winters have been so balmy — almost legit shorts weather for normal people — that his machismo is threatened.
“It’s like losing an identity,” Natti, 38, a producer for WROR’s “Bob & LBF in the Morning,” said as he pondered the challenge of maintaining his swagger amid climate change. “I may have to start wearing tank tops.”
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The rest of us are facing an existential question, too. Without our gutter-busting ice dams and space-saver vigilantes, who are we? Delaware? (Of course, at the rate the planet is warming, fretting about the relatively minor threat to our self-image is a luxury.)
Southerners have their charm. Californians their laid-back vibe. We’re known for looking a blizzard in the eye and heading to Dunkin’ for iced coffee. Or at least that’s who the world thinks we are, thanks to a rep that’s been immortalized by Hollywood, and in 2022, captured in a New Yorker humor piece titled, “Script of every movie set in Boston.”
“It is snowing heavily,” it begins, “and everything looks cold but somehow also wet. ... Everyone is angry.”
Luckily, the vengeful climate change gods can’t take everything away. We can still nurse grudges, noted former city councilor Tito Jackson, CEO and founder of Apex Noire, a cannabis dispensary. “A Bostonian is someone who can go to Bruins and Celtics games and still scream ‘Yankees suck.’”
We still have the Blizzard of ‘78 and the snowpocalypse of 2015. But quick — someone record an oral history. It’s already mid-March, and unless we get nearly a foot of snow, and soon, we’ll make a record for back-to-back winters with less than 20 inches. At some point there will be no one left alive who remembers what it’s like to panic storm shop at Market Basket.
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New England is warming faster than the rest of the planet, according to a study published in the journal Climate in 2021. We can already see the frightening signs of climate change around us — in ponds that won’t freeze and flowers that bloom early. It may even have an impact on how our children learn to navigate the world.
“We’re raising a whole generation of kids who never get to stay home during a storm and make under-the-table cash for shoveling old people’s driveways and sidewalks,” said Denis Leary, a son of Worcester and a comedian and actor. “Which is a business and tax lesson they ain’t ever gonna learn in school.”
A warning about future generations of Bostonians came in the journal Nature in 2017, in the form of a study that concluded: “Regional ambient temperature is associated with human personality.”
People who grew up in regions with more clement temperatures, researchers reported, “scored higher on personality factors related to socialization and stability (agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability) and personal growth and plasticity (extraversion and openness to experience).”
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Say it ain’t so! Has the last Masshole already been born?
And consider a report by Forbes Advisor that compared drivers in 50 cities found that Boston’s were “best.” (Not a typo.) In Everett, pricey new condos boast “Resort-style courtyard pool with cabana seating.”
Cabanas.
This warming trend is claiming a range of victims. Pond skaters. People who’ve invested in Canada Goose parkas. And Meet Boston (nee The Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau). The marketing organization has worked hard for the past five years to position Boston as a compelling winter destination. Taking inspiration from Montreal, Quebec, and Scandinavian nations, it’s played up ice skating, Snowport in the Seaport, and saunas on the Greenway, said David O’Donnell, vice president of strategic communications.
And now this. “I don’t remember the last time the Charles froze,” he said. But what he does remember: “The one ‘storm’ we had,” he said, sarcastically referring to the mid-February nor’easter that wasn’t. “It was just me and my kids suffering from acute cabin fever during a non-snowday snowday.”
The past two winters have been so mild that we’ve been robbed of even the pleasure of escaping them. Carolyn Spicer, president of McDermott Ventures, is leaving soon for her annual girlfriends trip to the Bahamas. But it almost feels like an unneeded luxury.
“I can walk Castle Island here,” she said.
But perhaps we’re not losing everything. Maybe, in the end, Bostonians’ most defining characteristic is not the way we handle winter, but the way we handle life. If the weather turns on us by turning nice, we’ll just gripe about that, said comedian Bethany Van Delft.
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“As long as Bostonians can complain,” she said, “everything is good.”
Beth Teitell can be reached at beth.teitell@globe.com. Follow her @bethteitell.