Snowmageddeon? Pffft!

So, in case you missed it because you live under a rock, yesterday was supposed to be Snowmageddeon (or Snowpocolypse) for the eastern seaboard.

Weather forecasters got as excited as a 13 year-old boy who had found a Playboy under his fathers bed at the prospect of Winter Storm "Saturn" which was going to "Jedi Mind-Meld" (you know how I love to mix my metaphors)  with another low from the south and the warnings of dire weather began to spew forth from their mouths with all the seriousness of an Baptist Evangelist reading from the Book of Jeremiah.

In the Charm City, we were told it could be rain or it could be snow, or it could be both, but whatever it was it was going to be all kinds of white death for our neck of the woods. And we were going to be buried under IT.

So naturally, I went to the store and bought a loaf of bread.  Because that's what you do here whenever the weather people warn about storms like this.  Buying a loaf of bread in Baltimore in front of a major storm wards it off, just like garlic does the trick with vampires.

Now the people that panic before a snow storm caused a run capers, clam juice and potted meat because, well, it could SNOW.  Me - I stick to the bread.  Bread goes with anything.  Keep it simple is my motto. Besides it would take nuclear winter for me to go near potted meat, clam juice or capers.

True to the weatherman's dire warning, it started snowing at midnight on Wednesday.  We awoke to some snow on the roofs, and some on the grass.  But none on the roads.  The husband took the dogs for a walk and said, even though they had closed the Baltimore schools, he was going to work.

But two things went horribly, horribly wrong for the weather forecasters.   First, the ground was too warm to "hold the snow" and secondly, it didn't really snow, it just rained and snowed or just rained.  But no white death.

Baltimore weather people are really excitable, but they aren't really all that good at forecasting the weather.  You see, to the west of Maryland, the Appalachian Mountains and their air currents tend to divert weather fronts moving east-west and push them northeast. What made this storm different was that it was going to meet up with a front coming up from the south and that was to create a big mess. Simple, huh?

And the local news, sensing something that could have be BIG (had this storm come through in January or February), decided to deploy reporters all over eastern Maryland for the big story that wasn't going to materialize.

One station cut into regular programming to bring us an IMPORTANT WEATHER UPDATE.  Mostly it was reporters reporting that their snow men that they were building in the heavy wet snow were dissolving in the rain snow mix.  Roads remained clear because MDOT brined everything in advance of Snowpoclypse.

News operations had two hours to fill on the weather and it just wasn't there to report on.

A reporter stationed outside a restaurant on York Road in Timonium reported that traffic was light because people were "sheltering" from the storm.

"Sheltering?" Really?

And the anchors back at the station kept warning us that something akin to white death was coming.  Why?  Because no one wants to be this wrong.  It looked like they were smiling, but I think there was a far amount of teeth gritting as well.  Snow? YES, SNOW!

But not here.

Not in March.

Yes, you can get bad snows in March, but they never hang around for long.  March is month were it snows on Tuesday, and then jumps up to 60 in a couple days (Sunday, for us) so the snow never has a chance to stay and make you feel like spring is MONTHS away.  Even before global warming, snow just doesn't last in March.  Even Mother nature is tired of it.

Now, all that it's all said and done, the weathermen are STILL warning us that the very tail end of the storm could deliver us a wallop today.  Yeah right.

TO THEIR CREDIT, though, a couple of the weather people started making fun of themselves for going all doomsday on us yesterday and sounding like Chicken Little.  Better to be safe than sorry.  I see their point.  But there comes a time when you have to look at reality and say "Folks, it looks like we dodged the bullet  but what we are now dealing with is a whole lot of water..." and then go into your whole lot of water spiel.  But somehow, yesterday they all seemed to be in denial that there wasn't even inched of snow, let alone the feet they promised.

Here at the house we got about four inches of precipitation, which can come out to 16" of snow had it been colder.  And since I went out and shoveled the slush from our walks, nothing iced up over night.  Our back yard is as soggy as a rice paddy.  And we've got bread - lots of bread to eat.  But we don't have snow.

Up in the mountains to the west of Frederick, they did get snow, so it wasn't all hype.  It just didn't happen here.  All we ended up with was a who lot of wet and a healthy dose of weatherman over-hype that we'll be digging out from under for a while.