In Like a Lamb

Hello!

It's already March! Holy crap!  Out here on the west coast, March is coming in pretty tame, does that bode a stormy exit?  It's been sunny and mild temperatures.  I know the east coast is just about had their limit of snow and ice and all that, but here it is the same boring day, one after another.

Except for last Saturday! That was exciting.  Somebody started a rumor about snowfall in California last week and everyone got so excited, it was the only thing people would talk about wherever you went.  "Didja hear? Snow's a comin'!" was the refrain up and down the coast.  Everyone got all jittery about temperatures falling to around 32 degrees and our neighbor was on a non-stop chopping spree with his firewood.  People started discussing stew recipes and wearing their big puffy jackets and moaning about how it was "freezing" at 50 degrees in the day time.  Woowhee! People got all antsy in their pantsy about this drop in temp and the snow.

Then, wouldn't you know it, Saturday a new sun dawned and people all blinked and slowly made their way outside, expecting to see a winter wonderland and have everything closed down due to snowfall.  What they met instead was...another boring weather day in California, or, as the tourists like to call it, "wow! it's beautiful out here!"  Yup.  No snowfall.  No freezing pipes.  Perhaps up in the mountains they had snow (we did see a bit of a dusting of white cap on a distant mountain), but none in normal elevations.  We visited around and the closest anyone got to snowfall was a man we caught discussing how white his lawn was that morning.

"White! Did you get snow?!" at least four people jumped on him to answer.  He looked suddenly as if he'd bit into a lemon wedge on half his face and swallowed his excited words with a, "no, no snow.  Frost!" but it was lame and everyone knew it.  Frost.  Who cares about frost?  Oh well.

I remember last year, the area got all excited because the temperature was dipping down to 32 degrees one night.  Public advisories were sent out warning citizens on the danger of frozen pipes and protecting pets and children from the cold.  They even gave specific instructions on how to wrap newspaper around your pipes to protect them from the cold.

I swear, if some freezing temperatures or snow ever did actually fall in this area, people would just panic or something.  The crazy people carrying the signs bashing gays downtown would declare it the end of the world. The hippies would all freeze to death outside loving on mother nature.  Everyone's pipes, pets and children would burst from the dip into the low 30's.  It would be a miracle if anyone survived...well, except the homeless.  They have about 20 layers going on already, so they'd probably be all set.