This article by Ray Spitzenberger first appeared in IMAGES for March 7, 2019, East Bernard Express, East Bernard, Texas.
The month of March has brought winter back to us in spite of the fact that both Punxsutawney Phil and Bee Cave Bob did not see their shadows in February, an omen indicating an early Spring. Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog, seeing or not seeing his shadow in Pennsylvania has been an American tradition for 120 years and has this year predicted an early Spring. Realizing Pennsylvania weather and Texas weather were drastically different phenomena, Texans began their own separate tradition with Bee Cave Bob, the armadillo living near Austin, making that determination for the Lone Star State.
So, if neither Phil nor Bob see their shadow, by March, an early Spring should be here! Not so! Obviously! It’s not surprising, however, because, according to the Groundhog Club, Phil has made his prediction for an early Spring 19 times since 1887, and 103 forecasts for more winter, and has been wrong 61% of the time. I don’t know the stats for Bob, but he got it wrong for Texas this year too.
As I am writing this, a freeze warning has been issued by Wharton County for tomorrow morning, forecasting a low of 30 degrees, even lower in other parts of Texas; it is snowing in New York, where tomorrow’s lows are predicted to be a single digit and it is sleeting right now in Dime Box, Texas. The Midwest is being hit with more snow and ice and the forecast of another Arctic front following on the heels of this one. Currently, it is 9 degrees in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota, and 15 in Illinois. When you read this, later in the week, it should still be very cold (if the weather forecasters are more trustworthy than Phil and Bob).
One of the advantages of being old is that you have seen early Springs, late Springs, extreme weather patterns of all sorts, before, so nothing surprises you. I can remember when I was a child, and we would have sleet many times during a particular winter, some of the younger adults would be convinced that the world was experiencing the beginnings of a New Ice Age But my wise old grandfather would say, “No, you should have seen the sleet storms we had when I was a kid! This is nothing compared to that!” With Australia’s severe drought and extremely high temperatures this year, many were ascribing such a dryer-and-hotter-than-usual phenomenon to Global Warming. Maybe. Maybe not.
Over the numerous years I have lived, I have seen a lot of Early Spring/Late Spring weather patterns, some here in Texas, others elsewhere. I remember walking in the snow to church on Easter Sunday in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and looking at chunks of ice still in the creeks in June. I remember attending a convention in Ft. Collins, Colorado, in early April, and huge patches of snow where still on the ground. I remember driving in a blizzard on a highway in Ontario, Canada, on Thanksgiving Day, with locals saying, “It never snows in November!” I remember a winter so cold in Dime Box, Texas, that almost everybody’s water pipes burst, even those covered and the water turned off. I remember being in Mequon, Wisconsin in mid-summer, with the temperature 104 degrees and no air-conditioning (“Oh, it never gets hot in Wisconsin!”).
Although, when you get old and nothing about the weather surprises you any more, you still hate those years when there are extremes, such as multiple hurricanes and repeated floodings, all in one season. Life-threatening events are terrifying and often end with tragedies, such as the horrendous tornadoes which hit Alabama, Georgia, and Florida yesterday. These unexpected storms were more devastating than the ice storms.
It’s a given that sometimes weather predictions turn out to be right, and sometimes they don’t. I am writing this on Monday, and you will read it on Thursday; and no matter what the weathermen and Phil and Bob say, we live in Texas, and who knows what it will really be like in three days.
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Ray Spitzenberger, a retired college speech and English teacher and a retired Lutheran pastor, is a published poet and author of a book, It Must Be the Noodles.