I tell people I grew up without weather. When I was in college at what is now CalState Northridge, my urban geography teacher said that Southern California was in the last throes of perfect weather. That was why the movie industry located itself in the area. For a while I was truly upset, how dare that great weather pass me by! But eventually I came to cherish the idea that I had lived through a time unprecedented. Only problem was few people knew it. Maybe, with that in my history is the reason I find weather so fascinating, mostly snow. I had my fill of earthquakes living through the Sylmar quake of 1971. And, having never lived in the middle of the country, I’ve never experienced a tornados. Hurricanes are loud, booming, in your face weather.
But snow? It is so quiet. It blankets, a cliche, I know, but still. Maybe cliches come from absolute truths, and because we say them so often, it becomes, not just true, but boring. Still, it blankets. The world softens, it blurs into white on white. Beautiful as it is, it is dangerous. It is deadly, the snow, especially the heavy and wet stuff, takes out trees, power lines, roofs, just by its weight, by its doing nothing but falling, softly, gently down, on anything and everything.
I often think about what we mean as a traditional Christmas, with snowflakes on windows, and evergreen trees, the red of the holly berry. And, it takes a while to remember two very important things about snow: less than a a third of the population of the planet experience a Currier & Ives Christmas, and, most snow the wicked, terrible weather of snow comes in the middle of winter, long past the glories of the holidays.