Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 20, 1993 TAG: 9401150020
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Monty S. Leitch
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Those were the days when I drove 35 miles downhill from Floyd County every morning for a job in the Roanoke Valley, and 35 miles uphill for home every afternoon.
Those were the days when weather was my deepest concern: not, Will I be able to get to work if it snows? but, Will I be able to get home? I followed all the forecasts, and asked everyone I knew for their advice. That spring morning, I left home blithely, thinking, It's April, after all. This will be gone by noon.
Still unconcerned after a gray, drizzly day in Roanoke, still reassured by the forecasts, I started home at my usual hour.
But I never got there. What had been drizzle in Roanoke was ice on Bent Mountain and snow even farther uphill. More than 15 inches of wet, heavy snow had covered Floyd County's roads and weighted its power lines. I couldn't get home, I couldn't call home. But traffic in Roanoke, as promised, continued to move along at its normal brisk clip.
Last Wednesday, a friend from Roanoke called me in the morning. ``Watcha doing?'' she asked.
``Watching the snow,'' I told her. ``Watching the birds in the snow.''
``Snow?'' she said. ``What snow? Nobody forecasted snow.''
Nevertheless, huge feathery flakes of Floyd County snow had, in one surprising hour, piled nearly 3 inches over the grass. A flock of frantic birds at my feeder, trying to keep up with the storm, included almost a dozen evening grosbeaks. Snow festooned the trees with cottony lace, just like holiday cards depict.
``I wish it would snow here,'' my friend on the phone said.
And just at that instant the power on my end of the conversation blinked.
The difference of a few degrees, the difference of a few hundred feet in altitude, and the same dismal wintery rain that was raining on her was making my Christmas white.
Wednesday night, the temperature here began to rise. The eaves began to drip; heavy show slid off our steep roof and fell with plops beneath the gutters.
Lying in bed, I listened to the sudden, surprising snow seep away. It grew heavier and heavier. Lulled by the steady drips, my eyelids grew heavier, too.
What had come in a flash slipped away slowly under cover of darkness. Wednesday morning, the trees were bare again, anxious in a new wind from the west, and the roads were as open and dismal as any city street.
I do not live where you live. You do not live where I live. Various forecasters will try their best to tell us what to expect, but they will always be, inevitably, unavoidably, wrong.
Look out your own window. Examine your own skies. Raise your own face into the wind and trust what your senses tell you. Live where you are.
\ Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB