Jan. 15—Well, it happened again. A much-ballyhooed major winter storm forecasted to blanket Western North Carolina with several inches of snow failed to materialize, leaving disappointed snow-lovers wondering what to do with all of the milk and bread hoarded during the lead-up to the non-event.
Hey, there are only so many milk sandwiches a person can consume.
Haywood and surrounding counties were predicted to receive up to 8 inches worth of wintry precipitation last Friday, prompting emergency runs to Ingles and Publix, widespread school cancellations, early closures for many businesses and panicked calls to the propane company seeking tank refills in case the storm caused power outages.
As is so often the case, it turned out to be much ado about…well, not nothing. After all, those of us not living in the highest elevations of the county did receive a couple inches of snow. But it was far from that “just one good snow this winter” that many were hoping for. I guess we can call it much ado about not very much.
I developed a theory years ago that TV weather forecasters are in the pocket of “big grocery.” When profits are low, grocery executives get on the phone to the local meteorologists and initiate “Operation Bread and Milk.”
“Yo, Jason Boyer,” the Ingles vice president of meteorological bribery will say when the WLOS-TV chief weather guru answers the phone. “We need a little favor from you. We need you to tell your viewers that Western North Carolina is about to get socked by a major winter storm — one of those coming up from the Gulf of Mexico…er, Gulf of America, not one of those wimpy Midwest clipper systems. Tell them there’s going to be significant accumulation, and they need to prepare now. They’ll know what to do. Make this happen, and there will be a little something extra in your shopping cart, if you know what I mean.”
The issuance of an upcoming “weather warn day” will send us frantically scrambling to the grocery store in search of bread, milk, eggs and toilet paper. The TP I understand, but why the obsession with bread, milk and eggs when it’s supposed to snow? Is everyone else making French toast? I’m more of a beer-and-potato-chips kind of guy — especially if the snowstorm is supposed to hit during a weekend of college basketball and NFL football playoffs.
In any event, regardless of what’s in our respective grocery bags be they paper or plastic, we all will have done our part to increase the profit margin for the grocery-industrial complex.
Obviously, I’m just joking here. The good folks at Ingles are not pulling the strings of the good folks in the weather department at the local TV station. The reality is that predicting the weather is a tricky business. Predicting the weather in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where a few hundred feet of elevation can mean the difference between a cold rain and a foot of snow, is particularly difficult.
The meteorology folks even tell us this with each and every approaching winter storm, yet we still get our hopes up for “that one good snow this winter” — especially when it’s been a few years since the last “one good snow.”
I do find it amusing to watch the weather report the day after a predicted significant winter weather event underperforms. To me, it’s a lot like listening to the coach’s comments on the radio on the ride home after your team loses a game, with all the ifs and buts and what went wrong and what went right.
Although this latest snow was underwhelming compared to the hype, Margaret and I did take the opportunity to enjoy a snowy Friday evening soaking in the backyard hot tub while sipping on Woodford Reserve with a single chunk of ice, until the snow turned into sleet and the ice began pelting us from above. Actually, even sitting in a hot tub in the sleet isn’t a bad thing.
And it’s only mid-January. There are still a couple more months to get “that one good snow this winter.”
Bill Studenc, who began his career in journalism and communications at The Mountaineer in 1983, retired in January 2021 as chief communications officer at Western Carolina University. He now writes about life in the mountains of Western North Carolina.