We went wild with excitement. Ran out into the yard, whooping, and put our tongues out to catch flakes. We only got a light powdering on the grass, but it was rarer than fairy dust, and just as magical.

Today, we got hours of sodding rain. Which melted the pretty snow into slush and will freeze into nasty ice overnight (low is predicted to be 18 degrees). I hope the idiots who rooted for RAIN are satisfied!

Bahum-Bug.

I remember a weather guy named Sonny Eliot who used to do the forecasts for the NBC TV affiliate in Detroit back in the ’60s and early ’70s. He was something of a clown who injected a corny kind of humor into his weather reports, and always used a piece of chalk to make a squeaking sound to pinpoint one town or another in the (removable) Keweenaw Peninsula on his Michigan-shaped chalkboard. His forecasts were pretty good, and he was also a fairly senior Weather Officer in the Air National Guard/Air Force Reserve, so he didn’t joke around when it came to the serious warnings. Don’t know why, but I always loved his forecasts. Maybe for the same reason I loved the 3 Stooges. But the weather never seemed that bad when Sonny was giving the forecast.

I bet if we went back to 5 minutes a day of a weatherman drawing on a map with chalk, we’d all feel a lot less traumatised by the weather and maybe even have more money in our pockets.

We rarely get white Christmases (Christmii?) here. So far this year we’ve only had a couple of light accumulations of snow. This past Monday the temperature got up into the mid-60s and the next day we had freezing rain and snow. The most recent storm, on Friday, started out as sleet but ended up as rain.

I do like living here. We get a little bit of every kind of weather, but not too much of anything.

Winter is a BIG part of why I plan to retire in Hawaii. The Farmers’ Almanac is calling for a particularly harsh one; based upon the Autumn weather thus far, I can easily believe it… 🙁

Decided to go true North for college: North Carolina (“flatlads: Raleigh-Durham area) — Hot as Hades in Summer and until late Fall — then truly gray and dreary. But one light dusting of snow, and everything shut down, including classes. A peek into Duke Gardens invariably revealed blissful collegiates having the time of their lives on make-do cafeteria tray sleds sliding down the slightest inclines!

Somehow I felt the urge to settle down in the real North — NYC. And I can’t remember a single snowfall that didn’t (and still doesn’t — some 30 + years later — make me giddy as a kid seeing his/her her first snowfall. I don’t thin I’ll ever get enough (but then again, I don’t have to shovel and paths or driveways!)
(I will admit to finding it all not quite so inviting after a few days of city traffic and plowing, daytime melting and nighttime re-freezing, leaving every street corner a mix of black ice and slush…..but a good pair of waterproof boots makes it palatable)

Even now in my fifties, I still feel the letdown when I miss a snowstorm if I’m visiting family in FL…. While most people’s idea of nirvana is a warm beachfront, mine is still a climate with 4 seasons and a generous dose of snowfall, particularly when I have a terrific fireplace to cozy up to (one thing I miss here in the city, but will be a must upon my impending move elsewhere).