You let your guard down and look what happens. It snows before Thanksgiving, that's what.

As I stood freezing at the T stop yesterday, I had a depressing realization: It's payback time for last ``winter,'' when it was nice. Too nice.

And now come the consequences: a November that was 2.7 degrees below normal. A frigid start to December. Looming Valentine's Day nuptials for J. Lo and Ben Affleck. Things are going to get ugly around here, fast.

I'm a lifelong Northerner, but I'm not sure I'm up to winter anymore. Like an animal that's been domesticated and can no longer live in the wild, I've lost my survival skills. Layering? That has something to do with assembling a cake, right?

It's not just the cold and snow I'm dreading, it's what they do to people. Remember 1996, when serial snowstorms so narrowed the sidewalks that the pedestrians became as vicious as the drivers? And homeowners who failed to clear their sidewalks were ratted out to the city's snitch-line by their neighbors?

It's enough to make a person move to Florida. Almost.

I called a friend who lives in the South for a pep talk. ``Maybe there won't be any retaliation from the cosmos,'' she said. She reminded me that the Patriots won the Super Bowl last year, and are now tied with Miami for first in the AFC East. ``That's all good.''

I liked her upbeat analysis, but she's no Old Farmer's Almanac. I decided I needed to face the truth, so I hunted down the 2003 edition.

``In some ways,'' the New England summary began, ``this winter will be like the last one, with above-normal temperatures through most of the season. But storms that missed us last year will hit us this winter . . .''

That was enough. Who can trust them anyway? I didn't want hocus-pocus (unless it was going my way) - I wanted serious science.

So I called Matt Belk, a meterologist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service, and asked if it was retribution time on Old Man Winter's part.

But Belk is an expert in fronts and high-pressure systems and Gulf Streams, not mob-style vengeance. ``I don't make arbitrary judgements like that,'' he said.

I tried a different approach. ``Are we going to have a bad winter?''

``It's an opinion as to what you define as bad,'' he responded.

I saw his point. By ``bad,'' did I mean a winter during which I never find a flattering hat? Or one in which I'm invited to either too many or too few holiday parties? Or where I've forgotten to write down the movies I missed and wanted to rent, and end up going to the video store and leaving empty-handed?

``By bad,'' I said, ``I mean cold and snowy.''

``We've already got cold and we've already got snow,'' he began ominously. ``Typically, once you start heading in one direction you keep going that way.''

For example: If you get a lot of snow, then the sun is not as effective heating the ground, so the air keeps getting colder and colder.

``And the core of the cold air starts to spread,'' Belk said. ``Once you start down that road, it takes something significant to break the trend and head in the other direction.''

Here I broke in. ``Like an intervention?'' I suggested. They did one of those on ``The Sopranos'' to try to snap Chrissie out of his drug habit.

``I don't think,'' Belk began, ``that there's any skill of man to intervene on that kind of level.''

Really? Not even if we all got together and told winter that we loved it, but that its behavior is harming those who care about it (party girls who like to wear heels out at night, mothers of boot-hating children, the elderly)?

Wouldn't that make winter understand that dropping a little snow might seem like fun, but in the end is quite destructive?