Stormy Weather

As I write this, we are here in the Central Valley hunkered down and braving the “Storm of 2008.”

I think I may have missed the storm somehow. Either that or we got ripped off with only a sprinkle of rain and a few puffs of wind. Then again, I grew up in the Midwest, lived in the Rocky Mountains and moved here from the Southeast so to me it just doesn't reach storm status until it blows over a hundred miles an hour, moves your house or dumps accumulation measured in feet.

On the TV radar, this storm did look like a super-sized hurricane. Where it hung over Tulare County, the radar showed a hazy fog – seemed like winter weather as usual to me. A winter storm means snow to me and I'm feeling a little bit left out.

As much as I love our California sun, unusual weather is exciting, so I was really looking forward to milking it for all it was worth.

In our very first Christmas newsletter from Visalia, I told our loved ones how much we liked our new hometown, and then I added, “Our only regret is that we'll never have snow here in the Valley.” That was December of 1998. Almost exactly a month later, I had to print a retraction. It read, “Never say never,” and included a picture of the boys with a snowman in our front yard.

I was amazed that all the kids in the neighborhood were out playing in the snow before dawn. And even more amazed when I discovered that their parents had awakened them and sent them out in the dark to play. A neighbor explained that it was because no one expected the snow to last after the sun came up.

As a girl, I remember the morning we couldn't see our full-sized van in the driveway because the snow had drifted up over it. I sure didn't bother to go out and play in it. I groaned because I had to trudge through the snow to get on the school bus. And yet, now I miss it.

Just goes to show how we can romanticize anything we can't have anymore. Like adolescence – what wouldn't I give to be young and svelte and able to eat anything without gaining an ounce? The unbearable pimples and intolerable angst are almost completely forgotten.

Anyway, back in '99, I didn't mind eating my words a bit. And that's happened to me more than once.

When we lived in my husband's hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, I was surprised that it snowed there: a little every winter, and every few years we'd get an inch or two that would actually stick around. Our first winter there, I was shocked when my doctor called on Friday to cancel my Monday appointment. When they told me it was because of the “snow storm,” I laughed in disbelief. There was snow blowing around, but none of it made it to the ground. We had just moved there from the Mountain West and I was thinking, “These people are crazy!”

(Don't tell my husband, but in general, snow does make Southerners a bit nuts. Just whisper the word and every loaf of bread and jug of milk will disappear from the grocery stores.)

Well, I admit it – we got a snowstorm. (Notice a pattern? I guess if I want snow I have to move.) Eighteen inches is a good snow by any standards. But for a city with no snowplows, no sand trucks and ten trillion hills, it was a crisis. We lived on the side of one of those hills and we did not drive anywhere for seven days! At least we were among the lucky ones who still had electricity. By the way, that was March of 1993, dubbed the “Storm of the Century.”

Of course, the people who dubbed it also named these last few days of rain a “Monster Storm.” We didn't even get a good puddle in “Miller Lake,” what the boys named our backyard during El Niño. And the gusting wind just blew those snow clouds right over us to the mountains.

Growing up on the prairie, wind was a constant. Even in the summer. My weekly dusting chore included removing an eighth of an inch of silt from each windowsill. But in the winter not only did the wind etch the most beautiful frosted works of art on our windows, it howled while it created them. Even now, when our heater filter needs to be changed and it begins to make that wheezy whistling sound, I get homesick.

I'm poking fun at our storm for three reasons. First: I've lived here long enough that my relatives think I've grown very wimpy. (Last time we went home for Christmas the wind chill was 20 below – now that's a good reason to be cold!) Number two: I know how ridiculous a bunch of Midwesterners would look if you shook them up with the tiniest little 3.0 earthquake. And third: I love a good storm and I wouldn't mind eating crow again, as long as I don't gain an ounce and it tastes like snow.

Send comments to RoniSMiller@yahoo.com

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