Recurrent Training

Snow! For the last six weeks we have had cold and overcast, broken up by a few nice sunny days but not much snow. A lot of us had forgotten about it entirely.

Well it is back, with a vengeance. We should have known we were not home free. After all, it is still February. March, too, is open season for snow; even in April we can catch a little snow in the first week or ten days. People were becoming accustomed to not having snow and even beginning to look at these snow-free days as a birthright.

This episode was well documented, having been part of meteorological discussions on TV since at least Wednesday. And the forecasters were dead-on, with an inch and a half already on the ground by 06:00 when I went out to try to identify where the Star had come to rest. Arriving at work two hours later, I noticed the cars in our lot had a good four inches accumulated on the hoods and roofs. Their owners had dutifully reported between 2:30 and 4:00 A.M. before the storm really got rolling. What we have now, at noon, must be some new snow and some blowing snow for we have about five inches down with significant snow in the air and maybe 1,500 feet visibility. Although accumulation seems to be less it is still coming down, and the radar shows we have a couple of hours to go.

The airport has been a mess all day. The planes are coming and going well enough but require de-icing, and are running delayed. Some airlines have more airplanes to de-ice than space to do it efficiently, crowding the ramp and clogging traffic. Nothing gets done quickly and safety outranks timeliness. I am sure there will be passengers unimpressed with that mantra when they miss their connections in Chicago or Atlanta. Probably the same ones will piss and moan about almost anything, custom-designing their whines to blend with their surroundings, oblivious to the conditions.

Citizens of Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma require an occasional refresher course in winter. The season can run wet or dry for a while and then reverse itself, having lulled everyone into a routine before bitch-slapping us all back to attention. I guess this is one of the days we will have Mother Nature's hand prints on our cheeks, but it's all just part of the charm of the Midwest.

Dormant, but not dead

Yesterday was Lincoln's birthday. Is this still the "dead of winter," as my mother used to say? Why is it called that? Yes, everything is dead. Or at least dormant. But January seemed more like "dead" with its near-zero temperatures and the blanching of the snow upon the landscape. This month we have had several mild days and only a little precipitation. Today it has become cloudy and cold again; at least it is not below freezing.

Today is the day we first catch a glimmer of the light at the end of the tunnel. And today major league baseball pitchers and catchers are allowed to officially report for Spring training. In less than two weeks they will be engaged in playing baseball. The season is beginning its long journey which concludes more than eight months hence when the World Series is finished. A lot can happen in that time. This is one of life's punctuation points when I tend to consider what is ahead.

What will be different by then? Will the Stimulus have stimulated us? Will I still have a job? Will America still be attack-free? One can run through all kinds of mental scenarios respecting what could have transpired by the time the last Series game is over. I guess it is the frailty and uncertainty of life itself that makes me wonder. Maybe it is the quiet overcast days that lend themselves to that mood. But here in the "dead" of the season, in the tunnel, there is that light way up ahead.

And where there is light there is life, after all.