As I write this Monday, the snow has started to fall again.
El Nino, the small boy literally translated, has meant nothing but a huge bummer this winter. I will be the first to admit I don’t really care for winter. But what gets me through this time of the year is the snow, it’s something to look at and it’s a lot easier on the eyes than the ‘big ‘ol stinging? I have gotten used to in the past weeks.
I remember a time in the middle of October traveling to Flushing, north of Flint. On that beautiful day, the expressway was stationed directly under a storm movement that was busy dropping snow on Oakland and Genesee counties. I was headed to that area to visit the boys regional golf finals, an event postponed due to the inclement weather.
Discouraged, but not beaten, I found my way back to I-75 and headed back toward Rochester High School, where the girls tennis team was supposed to be competing in regional finlas.
It was after one o’clock in the afternoon before I had made it to my destination, and after driving through much more amicable weather, I arrived to empty, rain-soaked courts. Needless to say, there was no tennis going on.
That was definitely one of the most odd days I’ve had while covering sports. I later found out golf would be rescheduled and the tennis matches had been moved into my own backyard, at the Deer Lake Athletic Club, less than two minutes from my office. So, after driving many, many miles, I packed up my gear again and headed around the corner to finish what I had set out to do nearly four hours earlier.
With the snow again covering my car when I left the athletic club, with the Wolves closing in on a dogfight for the no. 1 spot, I again wondered how this could be happening so soon.
‘Oh great, winter will be coming sooner this year,? I said to myself.
I could not have been more wrong.
I remember approaching the beginning of the holiday season, exiting the parking lot of a shopping center, and my fianc? saying, ‘It looks like it will be a white Christmas for sure.?
As Thanksgiving passed with only a light dusting, I let it slide. As the Christmas holiday approached, I stood at ease. However, as the big day drew nearer, I did become worried.
That concern melted away with the reassurance that a Christmas miracle would drop at least an inch or so, enough to make Santa tracks in the back yard, but alas, nothing.
Not only had it not been snowing, the weather was giving us consecutive 40-degree days or warmer, but rainy. I could not help but think each day as my windshield wipers sloshed to-and-fro, how much snow would it have been if not for the temperature.
The rain also dampened the artificial snow the good people at Pine Knob have been making for skiers.
All this hopefully will be forgotten in the coming weeks as the temperatures drops to a respectable level, under 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and January can make December, the fifth-warmest in Metro Detroit since 1870, a distant memory.
Hopefully the climate’s return to normalcy will return renegade youths? to snowboarding before they are relegated to ‘ghost-riding? their ‘whips,? an automobile hip-hop fused ‘dance? born in the warm California climate.