March left us like a lazy lamb but April came in like a loony lion. Its first few days seemed more akin to the start of February. Well, what do you expect? As T. S. Eliot told you: April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

But we’ve been hit in 2016 with a funny idea of spring rain, actually a cruel idea. Instead we got the cold snows of a previous season. Pity the poor lilacs, never mind my one struggling daffodil now sickened and bowed over at the end of the driveway. Then let’s just take a deep breath and collectively wish winter out of here on its merry way.

Or as Chaucer said on opening his Canterbury Tales:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour.

Rough Google-style translation: While you’re waiting for March to leave your bones, have a healthy swig of alcohol and set your thoughts on soothing shores and on some virtuous ideas for baking.

Amidst all the promises of warmth and coiled hopes eternally bouncing along, you have to admit this is a month jam-packed with dark clouds. Historically speaking, that is. Here is a partial list of April horrors, my top 10, in chronological order. I grant you, there are debatable degrees of darkness, so don’t send me letters. I’m just sayin’.

April 14, 1865: Abraham Lincoln is assassinated.

April 20, 1889: Adolph Hitler is born. Then again he died by suicide April 30, 1945, two days after partisans executed Benito Mussolini.

April 18, 1906: The San Francisco earthquake claims 4,000 lives and 10,000 acres.

April 15. 1912: The Titanic hits an iceberg off Newfoundland, over 1500 drown.

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated.

April 14, 1970: Apollo 13’s oxygen tank explodes, moon mission aborted, successful splashdown April 17.

April 26, 1986: An explosion at the Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant causes a meltdown and a radioactive cloud still affecting death and damage to this day.

April 19, 1995: Oklahoma City federal building blown up by Timothy McVeigh’s car bomb, killing 168. Perpetrator born April 23, 1968.

April 20, 1999: Before killing themselves, two students shoot and kill 13 and wound more than 20 at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO.

April 6, 1930: The first package of Twinkies hits the market, with a banana filling.

I know I’ve left out assorted deaths, battles, mutinies, standoffs, shots heard round the world, income tax filing and other fiascos, but you get the idea. Quite a month this one called April. No wonder it celebrates its opening with a deliberate day of deception.

So I guess my moral is stop carping about the weather and just carpe diem. You never know about those clouds. As my mother used to say, everything looks dark before it all goes completely black. Turn your mind to warmer thoughts. Just checked the weather in London. It’s 61.

Or to quote Robert Browning: Oh to be in England, Now that April’s there . . .

Arnie Reisman and his wife, Paula Lyons, regularly appear on the weekly NPR comedy quiz show, Says You! He also writes for the Huffington Post.