And even that publicity-grabbing groundhog won’t emerge for another three to check on the status of shadows dancing in the Punxsutawney sun.
For these reasons and many more, Cleveland and Bradley County residents are urged to keep their resolve with this month’s sudden emergence of true winter weather. A little more than two weeks ago our region welcomed an historic White Christmas — considered by some here to be the first since the 1960s while others consider a slight dusting in 1989 as the last Yuletide snow.
The above is nothing more than fodder for wintertime debate.
At issue of late is the bright welcoming much of the Mid-South received Monday morning. This most assuredly included Cleveland and Bradley County whose residents awoke to a thick blanket of powdery white stuff that by most calculations began falling locally shortly after midnight.
To their credit, most weather forecasters said this winter storm could be a big one.
Yet its rapid accumulation in such a short amount of time might have raised a few meteorological eyebrows. Sometime after the established witching hour the mystical flakes were supposed to start dropping and leave one to three inches worth by dawn; another three to five were expected during the day Monday with sporadic snow showers off and on Monday night and today.
Sometimes weather just can’t wait.
Its coming isn’t our choice, just our challenge.
Within the first few hours of the inaugural flake Sunday night, some six inches had fallen. By the time many tried to escape their driveways by 8 a.m. or before, some 7 1/2 to 8 inches layered the frozen ground, burying with it sidewalks, streets, major roads, ditches, porches, parked cars and anything else left to its frenzy.
As we mentioned in a previous editorial during the holiday season, weather is news.
Sometimes it is big news.
And occasionally it impedes the news.
Such was the case early Monday as electronic newsmen fought to get to their radio or TV stations. Others made the wise choice to park overnight at their workplaces in order to greet morning risers to the winter’s second major layer of white.
This was no less true for newspapers.
Including ours.
The troops here began sliding in by 5 a.m. — for most about two hours earlier than the average morning — in order to get an early start on what would become a very long day.
It was ...
A very ...
Long day.
Like most news media outlets in the region, we fought our own battles to produce a product to service our customers and readers. Mondays are always a challenge because of splitting time with the weekend shift that publishes the Sunday edition; thus, we operated this time with a skeleton crew of a typical skeleton crew.
But we achieved phase one.
Once our newspaper rolls off the press, the next stage is getting it into the public racks and driveways of our readers. Obviously, area road conditions didn’t do much improving over the course of the day Monday so many of our carriers faced delays that involved more personal safety than it did individual want or desire to get the newspapers tossed.
For this reason, many of our readers received your newspapers late and in some cases you might not have seen them until this evening.
We ask your patience.
We want you to receive Monday’s edition but we also value the safety and lives of our contracted carriers.
Monday’s paper is being delivered, or already has been, and tardily in some cases.
If you haven’t received yours, here’s a hint of the lead story:
“Snow!”
In the appropriate wording of the headline, “It’s baaack!”
Please be safe in our region’s newest snowfall.
Enjoy it while carefully balancing any decisions to get onto the roads between “need” and “want.”
The snow will eventually melt.
So try to enjoy it ... safely ... during its stay.
