Nightmare News

It's on the local news. It's on the national news. I can't escape it unless I just turn everything off.

What, Trump? No, he's been blissfully (for me) absent from most of the reports, or at least not doing too much damage. I'm talking about the weather!

Snow, snow, more snow! Cold, cold, below zero cold! I think there are two states who aren't getting hit right now, and one has a record forest fire that finally quit making top spot on the news, and the other one is us. Hey, today I finally turned the furnace off and opened the house up to air out for a few hours. The morning news said we'd hit 77, but they lied. Just a little bit. (I'm not saying this to rub your frozen noses in it, just saying I agree it's awful and why we got out.)

I do of course have sympathy for all those who have to endure what Steve and I came down here to escape: another ugly winter. Relentless snowfalls in the northeast. Frigid temps throughout the plains. Icy roads causing accidents and parking lots. We Minnesotans - former though we be - are very used to that.

We're not, however, used to Minnehaha Falls making the national news for days in a row.

It is a bit nostalgic, however. I clearly recall hanging onto the railing for dear life (with heavy mittens) to ascend and descend the steps so we could hike along the side and around to the back of the icicle cave with a camera. Back when we were young and didn't break so easily, of course, and only thought of the beauty in all the shades of blue in the curtains of ice. Back when we wanted, needed to get that one perfect picture, overriding everything else that made sense. Now, as you might guess, just recalling the unsteadiness of the footing and how it wobbled the knees, grinding bone on bone before their replacements, is our main reaction to seeing them on the screen.

Trust that we don't miss it!

Also trust that, having endured too many decades of hard winters, we find at least some of the hype ridiculous. I mean, how cold can it really be when the idiot with the microphone is wearing their jacket unzipped and gaping open, no hat, earmuffs, neck scarf, or mittens on, with faces not a smidge of a combination of bright red and frosted white spots? C'mon, get real guys! It's just as stupid as the idiots talking about hurricanes while standing out in the edge of one just to have the storm surge splashing in the background, well before the real rain and wind hit.

Let those reporters head up to International Falls, properly bundled up because -37 demands respect, and show how fast stuff freezes. Hopefully not them, but it is an object lesson for the idiots. I always liked the "bammer". We had a respected meteorologist in the Twin Cities who would set a banana outside for a few minutes when it really got cold. Yep, a banana. Then he'd bring it in and use it to hammer a nail into a board. Now that's what I call frozen! The hot coffee tossed out of a cup would tinkle as it hit the ground as ice. I can still recall having to walk a couple blocks across the U of M campus for class as bundled up and wrapped up as I could be, nothing exposed other than my glasses so I could still actually see until they frosted over from warm breath, and feeling how painful that small exposure was to my face. See? Cold!

A news reporter who whines about snow depth really fails to impress when he's out standing in about 14 inches of the stuff. Go out and stand in the 50 inches of the stuff you're talking about, you wimp! Get a shot of the former parking lots, parks, or whatever with banks after banks of snow piled two times as high as a semi, or the ones where, even just holding their own single parking lot's worth of plowed snow, will still have banks taller than a car come mid May. That's snow, buddy. And hey, when that melt finally happens, take your kids out to hunt through the remaining dirt piles for the tiny treasures left behind: car keys, a few coins, stray mittens that somebody's mom searched the whole house through for for a week, a single shoe. At least the coins will still be good for something.

I happen to know somebody whose missing husband turned up when the snowbank along the railroad tracks finally melted. Maybe rethink taking the kids, eh? Check first?

I'm not claiming that the weather around most of the country isn't inconvenient, dangerous, painful, exhausting, life threatening, life taking.  But first, I lived through it. Don't care for a repeat, not even just that plunge in the gut on that one day each fall when my body remembers physically that another winter was coming. And second, all you news folks, don't wimp out when you're trying to impress us with how bad it really is! Those of us who know, know. The rest can't possibly imagine.