Peepers are peeping, birds are singing, flowers are blooming and people – good lord, there’s people! – are out walking, running, biking and playing outside. Spring has sprung.

And rather quickly, too. It seems only yesterday we were ensconced in winter’s icy grip, and snow was looming in the forecast. If the balmy temperatures of this week are somehow maintained, this could go down as Maine’s shortest spring in history.

Some time ago, during the peak of our discontent with this past winter, we pondered the Inuit myth of 100 words for snow, and our own frustrated ponderings of four-letter words for the white stuff. When it towered over our streets and driveways, we thought of some real beauties.

Now that the snow has melted – the last stragglers must have fled by now from this blessed heat – perhaps the nicest four-letter adjective for snow has finally revealed itself:

Gone.