April is the Cruelest Month

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An April storm system will bring heavy rain, mountain snow, and strong winds, from portions of California to the Pacific Northwest into this weekend. Debris flows, mudslides, and burn scar flooding may be possible in California. East of the Rockies, much colder temperatures and the threat of wintry precipitation from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast US Friday and Saturday.

April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.

In the northern hemisphere, April is classically associated with Spring. This is classic Eliot topsy-turvy. Is April cruel? How can April be cruel? It's spring; with flowers and mild weather and sex and love in the air.
He's giving us an insight into a mind that doesn't revel in these things as might be expected. "breeding/Lilacs out of the dead land" is a very heavy, depressed way to describe the blooming of flowers. He sees the same things as everyone else, but there is no joy there. "mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with spring rain"; a sense of loss and longing, of being rooted in the past, and spring re-awakening memories of things that have passed. By comparison; "Winter kept us warm" "forgetful snow"; these things suggest a state of comfortable emotional hibernation.

April is the cruelest month because the life and color of spring throw one's depression into stark relief and forces painful memories to surface.

T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land - Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and "one of the twentieth century's major poets.

Wild weather: Record cold, snow for central, eastern U.S.; Pineapple Express to soak West https://usat.ly/2GBmENl

California storm may test spillway at nation's tallest dam https://www.apnews.com/fbca02bfe0344edaa4397b6ea8be8599

https://www.weather.gov/