For many of us — especially those who had lost count of the polar vortexes by mid-January — winter can’t end soon enough this year. But the transition is rarely an orderly one.

It often starts with a deceptively sunny day in February. Everybody breaks out their light jackets and starts talking about taking walks at lunch, and then a couple of days later comes a blast of freezing temperatures and new snow, which in turn gives way to chilly rain and slush. People trot out the old joke about “if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes.”

That’s the nature of most transition. Even when you know you’re moving steadily toward the new, progress can feel halting and unpredictable in the short term.