Rue the cold

I took the Snowmaggedon predictions last week with several grains of salt.

Any time a good winter storm comes through, the tv weather guys start outbidding each other like collectors at an antique auction.

I think the highest bid I saw for Wave 1 was about 20 inches, which would have broken the record where I live by a good half of a foot. Round II was supposed to be as big, but it hasn’t happened as I write this.

Happens every year, seems like, which is why I get my forecasts from the National Weather Service.

They don’t have to worry about audiences or ratings. They just have to be mostly right.

The NWS forecast was for below freezing for a long time with several dips well below zero.

That is brutal. I was in Anchorage, Alaska, one winter and it wasn’t that cold. Six degrees below zero, that’s Minnesota cold.

But Kindra and I were prepared. We buy food in bulk, anyway, so we had all we needed to eat and we had three or four boxes of the firelogs we like to burn.

As long as the electricity stayed on and we had Internet service and could work from home, we figured, we should make it ok.

Then the cold hit and the snow blew in. Not nearly as much snow as predicted, but still probably four inches settled in the yard.

And, yowch! The cold. Outside, one could feel every single degree that wasn’t there. Needles into the skin.

We left water dripping throughout the house all weekend and were making it ok.

Then Monday morning, the molasses was too cold to pour on my oatmeal.

If you were outside any, you know how cold it was.

I felt for everyone who had to work outside., while I got to work on a computer in my fairly warm living room. Utility lineman, farmers and ranchers, police, wrecker drivers.

It was so cold I almost was sorry for the mice and rats that had to find a place to burrow under the snow. Almost.

Round II of the weather isn’t here as I write this, but I’ll be surprised if there is as much as the tv weather people have predicted.

But I am here to say this. If the National Weather Service says it is going to get cold, it’s time for thermal underwear.