On Wednesday morning, the area was under a winter storm watch. All area school and colleges were closed, motorists were being advised to stay home and truckers were warned that they may be denied access to the interstate highways in Georgia.
At 9:30 a.m., the temperature was 32 degrees Fahrenheit and nary a snowflake nor rain drop was anywhere to be found in the local vicinity.
On Tuesday evening, the weather gurus were saying that the snow would begin by 10 a.m. By Wednesday morning, the predicted snowfall was to be at 6 p.m.
It may be that the new Ice Age did come, but I was under a deadline and no snow was around.
Last year, the powers that be underestimated the weather and, from local officials to the governor of the state, the citizenry blasted their public servants for not responding to conditions that paralyzed the state of Georgia. This year, the mantra is “Better safe than sorry.”
Part of the problem is that we live in the South. We are used to blistering temperatures in August and Januarys that may see 70 degrees. We refer to our capital city as “Hotlanta,” and we close schools where there is sufficient snow to be seen — usually two or three flakes will do it. I didn’t have a winter coat for the first 16 years I lived in Georgia. There was no point.
All of this amuses our northern countrymen who deal with seven feet of snow. Think Boston. I spent three weeks at a seminary in Pennsylvania one January. It snowed every day. Did anything close? Of course not. Snow plows were out on the streets by 5 a.m., followed by salt trucks.
As I was walking across the campus with the dean of the program, he said, “How have your three weeks been?”
“It has changed my theology.” I responded.
“Really?” he said. “In what way?”
I said, “I now believe that Hell is cold and located about 28 miles from the Pittsburgh airport.”
In the Deep South, if we get up in the morning and snow is on the ground, we have a method of dealing with it. We wait until noon.
By noon the snow is normally gone and life is back to normal.
When we get hit with the very infrequent “big snow,” anything over an inch or any amount of ice on the road, we don’t have the equipment nor the temperament to deal with it. The people who think they do know how to drive in the conditions head out anyway, which is why 2,800 hundred vehicles were stranded and abandoned in last year’s “Icemegeddon.”
The upside is that children get a rare snow day off and spend the day building snowmen from the quarter inch of snow that sometimes dusts the ground.
One year, on a Saturday, we awoke to find about four to five inches of snow blanketing the earth. I immediately grabbed my camera and headed out to take photos of the rare event.
My wife said, “Don’t you want to wait until the roads are open?”
“If I wait,” I said, “the snow will be gone.” And, by noon, it was.
For many, snow means building a fire in the fireplace, sleeping late, catching up on work around the house, paying bills, and sitting at the window basking in the beauty and peace of a white world. For others, it means the panic of rushing to the supermarket and stocking up on enough milk and bread to feed Patton’s Third Army for a month.
A few days ago, when snow came to the North Georgia mountains, a little girl of about 3 was shown on the local news channel encountering her first snow. She was filled with wonder and, holding a handful of snow, said to the camera, “And it’s sooooo cold!”
So, embrace the wonder. Stay off the highways. Remember that, in a few hours or a day or so, life will return to the snowless normal.
And thank God Almighty that you didn’t have to live in Boston this winter.
[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Sharpsburg, GA (www.ctkcec.org). He is the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese which consists of Georgia and Tennessee (www.midsouthdiocese.org) and the Associate Endorser for the Department of the Armed Forces, U. S. Military Chaplains, ICCEC. He may contacted at [email protected].]
