“A Winter Storm Warning remains in effect from 6pm this evening to 11pm MST Sunday. *Main hazard . . . snowfall accumulations of 4 to 7 inches are expected. In addition . . . strong winds tonight into Sunday will produce blowing and drifting snow which will result in visibility dropping to under one-quarter mile at times.”

I want to be clear about a couple of things. First of all, there is nothing particularly unusual about this storm. This is the kind of weather one ought to expect in our part of the world at this time of year. Those of us who live in this place need to be prepared for a little snow and wind in the winter. We need the snow. The moisture is essential to the health of the forest and plains. The cooler temperatures assist with limiting the spread of certain insect populations. And if we didn’t get a storm from time to time, we wouldn’t have any stories to tell our grandchildren.

The second thing about which I want to be clear is that the timing isn’t exactly perfect for us. A storm on Sunday reduces attendance at church services. Some people stay in because it might be dangerous for them to travel. Slippery sidewalks can be a definite health hazard for seniors and others who have trouble with mobility and staying home is a reasonable away to avoid unnecessary risk. Others will use the storm as an excuse to sleep in and take a day off from church. I guess that makes sense, too, though less so for me because church isn’t an obligation for me. But my perspective is quite a bit different from that of busy families who are overcommitted and who spend a lot of time running around to a lot of different activities and for whom church is just another activity on a long list of things that they do.

But if we experience a small amount of inconvenience, it is not much compared to those in the Northeast who are getting walloped by a really big storm. I find it amusing that the Weather Channel has decided that winter storms need names like hurricanes. They’re calling this one “Nemo.” I’m not sure how they came up with the name. I haven’t noticed that there were storms with names that began with other letters of the alphabet.

Around here, some people can remember their parents or grandparents talking about the blizzard of 1888. They called that one the Schoolhouse Blizzard or the School Children’s Blizzard. Obviously weather prediction techniques weren’t very common in those days. There was no Doppler radar to track storms and the blizzard of 1888 happened on a relatively warm day and caught people unaware and unprepared, including school children trapped in their schoolhouse. The storm swept through Dakota Territory in the middle of the morning and the death toll across the upper Midwest was 235. The problem was when people tried to venture out in the storm. Those who stayed where they were generally survived.

I was living in Chicago in 1975 when the big storm hit South Dakota. Just 7 inches of snow came with that one, but the winds reached 70 mph. The wind chill hovered around 70 below and visibility was less than a quarter of a mile for a whole day. Eight people died. They say it was the worst storm of the 20th century. Rapid City didn’t find that storm anywhere near as devastating as the flood that struck the town in 1972. People generally used good sense and rode out the weather. But the storm never got a name to my knowledge. A big blizzard in 1986 caused a lot of livestock losses, but I don’t think that one got a name either.

Despite its reputation for cold temperatures and its location where the Alberta clippers run into the Colorado lows, North Dakota only suffered one or two blizzards each winter in the years we lived there. The locals always wanted to talk about times when the weather was more severe. No matter how cold it got, someone had a story of a time when it was colder. No matter how nasty the conditions were, someone would be quick to claim that it was “nothing compared to the way it used to be around here.” I only lived in North Dakota for seven winters, so I never gained the status of a “local.” It did get cold there. One Christmas Eve we cancelled our services at our small church because despite having turned up the thermostat and running the electric baseboard heat, we couldn’t get the temperature inside the church above 57 degrees. It was a lot colder outside. We got a mention on one of the late night comedy shows for our record-setting cold.

But the folks back East are getting hit hard by Nemo. There’s 34 inches of snow on the ground at Hamden, CT. The wind topped 77 mph in Boston. As far north as Maine they’ve had six or seven inches of snow and wind gusts in the thirties. Connecticut seems to be getting the deepest snowfall with lots of places with more than two feet. They are already calling it an historic storm. More than 3,000 flights have been cancelled. People have been ordered to stay at home and off of the streets. Fleets of snowplows have been dispatched. The City of New York has a record amount of salt ready to spread when it stops snowing. More than 650,000 homes have lost power. And these people still have a fresh memory of Superstorm Sandy that swept through there last October. Officials in the area are saying that they like the timing of the storm. Having it arrive on the weekend means that there are more people at home and more time to get things dug out before heavy traffic returns to the roads. There are roughly 25 million commuters in the path of the storm, so that is a pretty significant effect.

Church attendance probably will be down for Transfiguration Sunday in Boston, too.

So we won’t be complaining about a little snow. The pantry is full. We’ve made all of our firewood deliveries. The vehicles have full tanks of gas and we have lots of warm clothes. As far as I know, I’ll be at the church early tomorrow and ready for whoever is able to come.

I’m pretty sure our little storm won’t be getting a name.

Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.