Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 20, 1995 TAG: 9503200074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The calendar says that today is the first day of spring.
The calendar, of course, is wrong.
Oh, sure, it may be technically correct in an astronomical, spring equinox, day-as-long-as-the-night, Gregorian calendar kind of way.
But frankly, auto mechanics may be more reliable guides to the seasons than celestial mechanics.
Take Randy Zelenak, service manager at the Merchant's Tire and Auto Centers outlet on Franklin Road in Roanoke.
Some people measure the arrival of spring by the sighting of the first robin. Zelenak measures it by the first Freon leak.
For him, spring really began sometime last week, when the temperatures blossomed into the 70s - and folks were convinced that, after the March blizzard of '93 and the March ice storms of '94, we'd finally made it through the winter of '95 unscathed.
And so there we were, stampeding the same stores where last fall we stocked up on snow shovels - except this time we were clamoring to break out garden shovels.
``People were going wild wanting plant seeds,'' says Ray Smith of Smith's Hardware and Grocery at Copper Hill in Floyd County. ``We were getting calls for seeds all day long and I haven't got any. It's about two to three weeks early, but the weather has been so outstanding.''
And there we were, lining up at the same service stations where last fall we were hustling to put on snow tires - except this time we were complaining about how our air conditioning was on the fritz.
``Cars sit out in the sun all day and get to 90 degrees inside,'' Zelenak says. ``The first time somebody hits the AC and it doesn't work as good as they remember it did, here they come, trying to beat the Freon price jump. Before the week was out, we did 15 or 20 jobs.''
So that's how the winter of '95 ends - not with the bang of an Alberta Clipper packing ice and snow, but with the whimper of an air conditioning unit with dried-out and broken refrigeration seals.
(Consumer tip: To keep the seals lubricated, people need to crank up the AC every now and then during the winter - even if they keep the temperature on hot. ``That's something you ought to put in the paper,'' Zelenak advises. So there.)
Kind of a letdown, isn't it?
After two brave-the-elements winters we could boast to our grandkids about - hockey rinks collapsing, power outages that left some of us shivering in the dark for a week - what do we have to remember about this winter?
A rain-induced sinkhole that slurped down the northbound lane of Interstate 81?
Not exactly the stuff of which bad weather legends are made.
``I would probably call this the winter that wasn't,'' Zelenak says. ``We had a cold snap there and a couple light dustings of snow, but people were saying this was supposed to be worse. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as we thought it would be. It was kind of a letdown. Everybody was getting everything organized.''
Were we ever. Last fall, folks were laying in for the winter like squirrels hoarding acorns and walnuts. ``People started buying shovels in July,'' says Bill Wood, who runs Wood's Ace Hardware on Roanoke's Grandin Road. He doubled his stock of sleds, kerosene, heaters and ice melt - and laid in 700 extra shovels besides the 1,100 he usually orders for winter. People bought 'em, too, he says. Almost every last one.
And generators? ``I bet there's a generator in every other house up here now,'' Smith says of his Floyd County neighbors.
Didn't need 'em once, though.
So why wasn't this winter very memorable, weather-wise?
That tsk-tsk sound you hear is state climatologist Pat Michaels, lamenting the public's short attention span. ``It has not been snowless,'' he says. ``People are forgetting the virtually snowless winters of '81 and '82.''
Actually, he says, this was a pretty normal winter by Roanoke standards; it's just that we're remembering it against the backdrop of pretty abnormal winters. Maybe it's time for a brief climatology lesson.
This, Michaels says, tapping on a figurative map, is the jet stream - the west-to-east belt of upper air that girdles the Northern Hemisphere. When the jet stream blows north of Virginia, it keeps most winter storms from reaching us. When the jet stream blows south of us, the winter storms come howling down the mountains.
Virginia's winters tend to be either real bad or real good, depending on what the jet stream does.
This year, the jet stream stayed up North.
Why?
Who knows? ``To tell you the truth, if anyone knew the answer, they'd sure as heck better patent a forecasting system,'' Michaels says. ``Nobody really knows.''
It just is.
So does that mean winter's really over?
At Wood's Ace Hardware, it sure seems that way. ``People started asking lawn-and-garden questions in January,'' Wood says.
On Copper Hill, it sure seems that way, too, what with customers already thinking about planting gardens. But, Smith points out, those are mostly newcomers to the Floyd County countryside. ``Some of the transplants, they're ready to jump on into it,'' Smith says. ``I told one of 'em, `Man, you better wait. We're not through with it.'''
Indeed, the old-timers who sit on the store's bench are quick to regale the young 'uns with tales of spring snows.
It's snowed in Roanoke as late as April 18 - when four-tenths of an inch fell in 1983. We've had real snows, too, in April. In 1987, a storm on April 3-4 deposited 6.3 inches. The record for an April snow in Roanoke may be in 1971, when 7.3 inches fell on April 6-7.
But don't count on one. Michaels, the climatologist, already is hard at work at his computer, trying to figure out if the warm winter means we're going to have a long, hot summer.
He's not sure about that, either.
by CNB