Winter Weatherland is frightful and
fickle
Lori Borgman | Monday, February 02, 2009
If weather forecasters were held to a Three Strikes
and You’re Out law, they’d be wearing orange jumpsuits and dragging
tin cups across prison bars. Thank goodness they got this one right.
We received more than a foot of snow and I’m breathing
a sigh of relief for the weather forecasters. It’s not been a good
season for predicting snow.
It’s a tough business. No matter where you live,
it’s always a hard area to predict. The plains are hard to predict
because of the mountains, the mountains are hard to predict because
of the oceans, the middle is hard to predict because of the north
and the north is hard to predict because of the south.
As a result, our forecasters have been following
pink and blue clouds on the weather map for weeks, predicting snow
that never arrived. One forecaster looked so forlorn standing outside
under a clear sky that I thought about taking a little bag of artificial
snow left over from Christmas and tossing it on him, just to give
him some encouragement. A drive-by flaking.
The weather people have spent the bulk of the
winter standing outside with their plastic rulers and no snow to
thrust them into in order to show us that it is a terrifying one-inch
deep.
They’ve been waiting at truck stops hoping to
talk to truckers with horror stories to tell, but the truckers haven’t
had time to talk, because the roads have been clear and they’ve
been making good time and good money.
They’ve been lurking by the city’s garages housing
snow plows waiting to do those one-on-one interviews to let us know
snow plows are working around the clock, but the plows have been
idle.
Last week we were watching television on mute
and saw a female reporter peering out from under a hat, scarf and
coat collar pulled high, waving something around in front of the
camera.
“What is that? I asked the husband.
“It’s a snow brush and scraper,” he said. I knew
that, but sometimes I just like to engage him in conversation to
keep the relationship lively.
“But there’s not a snowflake in the sky,” I said.
“What’s she doing?”
“She’s demonstrating how to use it on a windshield
should we actually get some snow.”
According to the reporter, you use the brush to
brush off the snow and the scraper to scrape off the ice.
Who says television isn’t educational?
Even print media has been trying get a piece of
the winter storm action. Our local paper ran a full page story on
how to stay safe on ice. Tip No. 2 was “stay inside.” They even
had a picture of a woman who had actually – get ready for this --
fallen down. Quote: “I went from vertical to horizontal in no time.”
What a relief when snow started blanketing the
ground at a rate of two inches per hour. The weather forecasters
have been vindicated and will live to see a spring riddled with
thunderstorms, tornadoes and hail the size of grapefruit.
At last, reporters can descend on the snowplows
and truck stops and interview drivers who have slid off the road.
They can thrust rulers into snow banks and advise television viewers
on the appropriate ways to panic.
Once again, all is well in our winter weatherland.
