Baby, It's cold outside?
Or, someone's cold weather may be someone else's temperate weather...

This is the time of year when the WEATHER is the big story. TV Weather-casters, no longer relegated to a couple minutes 3/4ths of the way thru the broadcast, get to step right up to the plate and swing hard at the top of the news, gleefully rubbing their hands together as they offer up all their semi-confusing analyses of weather conditions, which we don't need to hear because we can see it all on the satellite weather map anyway.

In North Idaho, where I came from, single-digit lows are expected for Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights; it's Wednesday right now, so folks "back home" have a wee-little bit of time to try and protect their pipes as best as they can. Down here on the Oregon Coast, weathercasters are making much ado about frozen roads which probably won't get snowed on. The weathercaster said tonite that "if people see snow, they slow down, but if there's no snow, they don't", which is one of those logical gems that weather forecasters are so famous for.

In other words, you can't really see frozen rain on the roads, so take it easy. I think it's called "black ice", a term I haven't even heard used on the TV news down here. Lemme tell ya, "black ice" is an ultra-common term up where I used to live. I'm just kinda thinking that, after experiencing for YEARS, the weather "up there", I can handle almost anything Mother Nature throws at me down here. However, I have one little TRUE STORY which puts this all in perspective:

I was shopping at a local retail grocery outlet today (all right, "grocery store"), and was in the process of loading groceries into the back seat (oh, my aching back), when I saw one of the lady grocery checkers, evidently returning from her lunch hour; she had her coat on and her arms were tightly crossed in a body-hug as she proceeded to the store's entrance, and she was shivering; I looked up at her and I said, "you sound like you're freezing", and she said, "Brrrr! COLD!!!" And I thot, "huh?"

To sum all of this up, I had my coat on, but it was open. I wasn't shiverrrrring at all. The skies were overcast, it was not raining, the winds were light, and it was about 45 degrees. A perfect temperature for getting things done. And she, an area native, was shivering. I was tempted to tell her, "you should go to where I used to LIVE", but I didn't. After all, being new to the area, I don't want anyone to regard me as a smart-ass. Not right away, anyway...
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Of course, one snowflake on the roads, or one broken egg on the freeways in Los Angeles can stop traffic for who knows how long...but if I lived down there, I'd probably think, "wow, it is so HOT here all the time!" Whether you can see the snow on the roads or not...do slow down; always a good practice in the wintertime.