Gasconade County Republican

Wait for it

Wednesday, 01 February 2012 07:50 Bob McKee

As this is being written, temperatures for the last two days of January were expected to hit the mid 60s. In fact, most of this week is predicted to be unseasonably mild, at least until the weekend. There is a chance of a rain-snow mix Friday night as temperatures make a return to more seasonable levels for several days after that.
And that’s the way it should be. Sixty degrees in February just isn’t natural, but I’ll take it. So far this has been an exceptionally mild winter across most of the country with unusual “winter” weather that included spring-like storms and even tornadoes across the southeastern United States. Oh sure, some areas have received dump truck loads of snow, especially in the higher elevations out west, and frigid air has not been a total stranger to parts of the country.
Even balmy southern Gasconade County has experienced a few days this winter of temperatures in the low double digits and a little reminder that it can snow here on occasion. But we are just now entering the month of February which in the past has proven it can be brutal. Then there is still March ahead which around here occasionally has come in like a P.O.’d polar bear (forget the lion thing) and hung around for most of the month.
So the weather so far this winter has a lot of people on edge, not because it’s been mild, but because of its potential over the next couple of months. It’s kind of like, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Will it be a soft, barely audible “plop,” or will it be a deafening “kaboom?”
All I know for sure is that I’m taking advantage of the nice weather while it lasts. On one of those pleasant days last month I decided to finish some yard work that somehow got indefinitely delayed earlier in the fall. I went to the shed to get a rake and after getting it off the wall, turned to go back out the door. But parked nearby was the ancient Gold Wing and it caught my attention. I looked at the rake in my hand, looked at the bike, looked at the rake again then hung the rake back on the wall. No contest. There are very few days in January that allow for a comfortable ride on a motorcycle.
The next day was equally as nice only that time I didn’t bother looking at the rakes hanging on the pegboard. That day it seemed that every other motorcycle owner in this part of the state made the same decision, choosing a ride over dreary yard work or some other form of drudgery. Between Bem and Salem I met or saw dozens of motorcycles, and between Salem and St. James, several more, some with a group, some with one or two other riders, and some solitary riders like me. I was solitary because I didn’t want to waste time trying to put a group ride together or have the hassle of five or six people trying to decide which route to take. Sometimes going it alone is the simplest option.
If the forecast was correct for Monday and Tuesday of this week, there is a better than even chance that I will face again the tortuous decision of doing something productive or something just for the joy of it. I have a pretty good idea which way the decision will go.
But the reality of it is that winter is not over, not by a long shot. Thirty years ago this week one of the worst snow storms, a blizzard really, hit the area, knocking out power for days and leaving all but the main highways blocked by four-foot drifts. The 30 inches of wet, heavy snow brought down tree limbs and power lines and gusty north winds were strong enough to still push the snow into huge drifts.
And only five years ago a severe ice storm hit pretty much the whole state again downing power lines, tree limbs and entire trees. While bad enough here, it was worse in southwest Missouri, especially Springfield where I was looking after our parents while my brother helped his son move from Austin, Texas, to Springfield. Ice laden tree limbs cracked and crashed to the ground all night and the next morning a huge limb was across the back of our parent’s house, completely covering the deck and blocking the sliding door.
As was his habit, dad got out of bed about 5 a.m. to turn up the thermostat and then got back under the covers until the house warmed up. It didn’t warm up of course, because there was no electric power to run the furnace blower, but the second time he got up dad went ahead and put coffee and water in the Bunn thinking, I suppose, that the outage only affected the furnace and the lights.
So I am not so naive to believe that this month and next cannot bring us some real winter weather. All we have to do is get through the next couple of months and then we can go into the season for spring storms and tornadoes.