Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water or OK to go down to the fruit cellar, your calendar stops you dead in your tracks with one look: It’s still winter. After fooling you with warm temperatures, Mother Nature will open her bag of tricks and pull out her record-breaking weather, be it blizzard snow or Nanook of the North temperatures. We seem to have dodged a lot of her bullets lately, but don’t turn your back now.
Living near the ocean, we know what she is capable of and respect her enough to get out of the way. A few years ago, she sneezed and dumped a couple of feet of the white stuff on a city with one snowplow and a missing set of keys for the truck.
Snow more often than not turns into a problem; at first fall, it is a Currier and Ives picture postcard, dressing the trees in a white coating, but it can quickly turn into a call of, “Run for the hills!”
Growing up in New England, we had our fair share of snow, yet we never panicked. You simply went to bed and woke up the next morning with snow up to the windows. School was rarely canceled, since everyone walked there anyway, and who would want to miss the chance to throw that line-drive snowball at our nemesis, even if it was a substitute math teacher – accidentally, of course. If school was canceled, we took to the outside as soon as soon as we could pry the door open and burrow out to the sidewalk.
I can remember the back hall was always full of wet snowsuits lying on the floor next to dripping snow boots and sopping-wet mittens. No one dared venture into the house without making that stop. The smell of scarves cooking on the radiators or heating vents was a given.
And we never made a run on the grocery stores before the storm. There was no round-the-clock television hype; we simply coped with whatever Mother Nature threw at us. Back then, everyone had pantries and basements stocked to the hilt for the next Armageddon or family reunion, whichever came first.
More and more we are seeing what the weather forecasters call the Perfect Storm. It’s when two systems collide, and very often it’s hard to predict. Trying to understand it is sort of like when you are instructed to put those gowns on in the doctor’s examining room before a checkup or an x-ray. Most of the time you end up putting your head through the armhole, arms through the head opening, and then you are all twisted up in a bunch of material that doesn’t fit right, with an extra flap hanging at the back. No one knows where those extra ties are supposed to go; they should wrap around something, but you’re not sure it’s you.
Snow is not the only thing we experience around here. A good bolt of lightning, and it’s crawling room only under the bed. Between the dogs and the other pets, you need to book well in advance for a spot.
And Mother Nature likes her howling winds off the water. As a cancer survivor, I never bothered wearing a wig. I learned my lesson the first time I tried it. A gusty wind that I normally would ignore blew it right onto a nearby car’s windshield, where the driver tried to beat it with a stick, no doubt thinking it was some kind of rodent.
But we do have something that Mother Nature never counts on during her weather fits – dedicated transportation workers, neighbors, kind strangers and volunteers. So, man up for the remnants of winter, but remember daylight saving time is just four weeks away.
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Nancy Katz has a degree in creative writing and is the author of the book, "Notes from the Beach." She has written the column Around Town for the Cape Gazette for twenty years. Her style is satirical and deals with all aspects of living in a resort area on Delmarva.
