It’s a tradition unlike any other: An Upper Midwest Memorial Day Weekend carried out amidst the hindering malaise that is cold, rainy, cloudy, and otherwise unpleasant weather. Add in the tail end of mayfly season and you have the makings of a rather terrible holiday weekend. If you purchased a lake house here sometime between last July and today, you’re likely planning guests for this weekend. Your grill is ready. The flowers are flowering. The beds are mulched. The pier is in and the boat is gassed. Everything is in place for summer 2025. Everything except the forecast. Your expensive new toy appears poised to not yield the promised results, to say the least.
This is the issue with the build up and implementation of Memorial Day Weekend. It can be summer, sure. I think it was summer last year at this time. But Memorial Day Weekend is no more summer than March is spring. The disappointment associated with this difficult weather reality is painful. Memorial Day is not the start of summer. It’s merely a practice run for the summer to come. If you approach this weekend with that in mind, you won’t be so bothered by the swarms of mayflies and the 47 degree mornings. We might even add in some rain and wind just to make things all the more terrible. But you shouldn’t be so bothered by this, regardless of the guests in your spare rooms and the unused boat resting in your slip. This isn’t summer, it’s just your last chance to work out the kinks in your summer plan. Treat this weekend as a rehearsal and you’ll be just fine. If it ends up being sort of nice, that’s just an unexpected bonus.