There was a time in recent memory when a meteorologist would come onto the radio or television and state with precise scientific certainty what the forecast would be for the next seven days. One of these television scientists even had a local “3-degree guarantee”. Since the weather in our hemisphere usually swings across the nation from the west to the east, it seemed fairly easy to predict what was happening in the plains states and guess how pressure systems off the coast and rising out of the gulf could affect us. If a suited weather person stood in front of a green-screened map and told us that unseasonably cold temps would be coming and that snow was likely, we would nearly always get those cold temps and snow or ice. The occasional surprise storm could pop up, but even then, prolonged emergency coverage would interrupt regularly scheduled programming and show up-to-the-minute “live track” radar of “tornadic activity” as we once heard a person in a nearby diner booth call it.
Something might have slipped. Last week, no meteorologist could say with anything like their usual hubris whether or not it would snow or how much we would get. It was cold enough and precipitation was in the forecast models, but something prevented an accurate prediction. As iron-grey clouds lowered and temps fell into the teens, the air felt and smelled like snow. Weather apps on our phones (I have four) all had different temps, each was forecasting a different amount of snow and even the TV meteorologists seemed baffled about what the skies would do. Each radar screen showed bright blue blankets over our area describing snowy precipitation, yet there was nothing.
I came home from work at the regular time, expecting fine flakes but there was nothing. As I was preparing to go to a meeting that evening, my family talked about all the different data available. I took the dogs out before temps got too arctic and there was extremely fine, sandy and sparse precipitation but it was certainly not snow.
I brought the dogs in, and was changing my shirt and shoes when Micki came in and said, “It’s snowing!”. I was just out there, so I was in disbelief. “No,” I said, “It’s super fine grit, not snow.” She told me to go look. I protested. “I just came in. It’s not really doing anything.” She gestured emphatically at the kitchen door, so I went back out. In the time between when I entered the house and went back out (perhaps three minutes), the ground had gone faintly white and snow was falling thickly. I went back through the house to the front door. Both halves of our front garden were already dusted. The street, our front walk and the roofs of the neighboring houses already had a fine covering, too. It really was snowing.
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In March of last year, we drove to New York for Micki’s maternal uncle’s funeral. Whenever we drive up north, it is usually to see my brother and his family and Pops. However, this time, we had to pass right through my home state and keep going. Pennsylvania has odd and persnickety weather and it sometimes is quite unpredictable, so we try to keep our travels to the Keystone State during more clement parts of the year. As soon as we crossed into the state’s southernmost reaches, the wind became violent and we experienced a severe snow squall.
Snow squalls are intense short-lived bursts of heavy snowfall that lead to frighteningly fast reduction in visibility. In our situation, the wind dropped temps enough to cause a passing thunderstorm to blow thick snow and for a few very fraught and nerve-wracking moments, we could barely see the road in front of us. It was lost, as was everything else, in a paper-white blankness. Within the hour, it was gone (the wind continued to pelt) and the sun came out and it was over. PA had welcomed us.
Growing up there, I learned early on that the weather was not to be trusted. It could be sunny and sixty during the daytime and then suddenly and without warning, cloudy, rainy and near freezing. Prolonged outdoor activities in PA require careful selection of possible needed clothing. A day hike could turn dangerous in just a few minutes. In the mostly settled suburban region between the Susquehanna and Lehigh rivers, weather could be so unpredictable that from when the buses left the stop and arrived at school, things could change drastically.
Time of year rarely has anything to do with it. I remember snow flurries as late as May, and swelteringly hot days in mid-November. Sunny, hot summer days where shorts and a tank top felt overdressed could suddenly turn into a temperature-dropping deluge that left one drenched and shivering. In 1993, a blizzard in late March caused temperatures to crash from the mid-60s to 25 degrees in a day. In another twenty-four hours, almost three feet of snow smashed onto the region with some windblown drifts reaching man-height. Within another day, temps were rising so quickly that the heavy snow collapsed flat roofs. Fields, creeks and streams flooded, as did roads. When temps dropped back below freezing at night, those wet and flooded zones refroze causing perilous hazards. 49 Pennsylvanians died. Thousands more were left without power and heat.
And that was just March.
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The day we were supposed to get snow, everyone at work buzzed about closing early. When I left the library at 5, it was still an open question. Some argued that an “abundance of caution” required closing, especially for employees who lived far away. Others suggested that, with predictions as wonky as they had been lately, it might not snow in the next month. By half past 5, standing on my front stoop gaping at the white wonderland spreading before me, I pulled my phone out and alerted my friend that I wouldn’t be making our meeting. While I spoke to him, a car speeding by frantically fishtailed into the middle of the intersection, nearly missing another car coming down the hill from the other direction. After hanging up with my friend, I texted the library director in my official capacity as the unofficial safety officer and offered the unsolicited opinion that it would be wise to close as soon as possible due to quickly deteriorating road conditions. He replied that the library was closing at 6. I went back inside but kept peeking out at the snow that was rapidly coating everything. By seven, the world was silent except for the faint static-like hiss of heavy snowfall. It shut down schools and delayed county office openings and caused days of perilous road conditions.
And we got less than an inch.
In Louisiana (you read that correctly) where our nieces reside, five and a half inches of snow fell. In no time, videos hit our phones of our eldest niece’s young family playing in the snow. We remarked that their little ones who were in full frolic in the white stuff, would likely never see so much snow again. We were sure that they would remember it and tell their grandkids when the time came though they would probably not be believed.
Videos shared online showed deep southerners using rigid hull inflatable boats (RHIB) as makeshift sleds and improvising snow removal procedures in a land where snow shovels and snow blowers never make the inventory of big-box warehouse stores. Others had people standing out in their front yards looking down at the snow with expressions of shock and confusion on their countenances. For a few short days, people from Georgia to Eastern Texas got to see what a “Yankee winter” is like. It may not be their last chance.
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Some centers for weather prediction certainly did foresee (to the extent possible) oncoming winter weather and made it clear that something was certainly coming. They just couldn’t say precisely what to expect. This waffling on the part of once-trusted scientific information makes me more than a little nervous. In the last year, alone, devastating weather has caused no end of harm to people all across our nation. If North Carolina and Pennsylvania are unpredictable and dangerous, how much more so is California, where a persistent six-month drought turned Los Angeles into a tinderbox fanned by Santa Ana winds? Within days of the fires coming under control, record rainfall caused the once arid soil to go crashing down mountains as nightmarishly huge mudslides. The manic weather seems to get a little worse every year.
Until this year, our winters have been generally mild. Frustratingly so. Cold temps kill mosquito larvae, ticks and fleas and help to cull other harmful and pest populations. This year's brutally cold winter (so far) has been tough for travelers and rough-sleepers and the elderly alike. All over our neighborhood, water pipes burst under the street in the prolonged sub-freezing temperatures. Stiffly bundled city water department workers jack-hammered and repaired the mains, even as the water froze as soon as it hit the air. I felt a pang for them this year. We have gotten a few cold days strung together in recent winters, but this year’s cold just stayed around.
Like pain or bad sickness, the brutality of the deep cold (and whatever the year has in store for us after the current brief warm up) will fade quickly as spring storms bring tornadoes and torrential downpours and strong winds. Long before the dreaded hurricane season descends on us, big trees will fall and kill power in our neighborhood and all over the state. Winter’s quiet white snows will seem like a dream by comparison. And then the pollen will coat everything and then it will get hot again. Intensely, brutally, lethally hot. We won't remember just how cold it got, if the pipes froze or if it was frigid enough to kill skeeters. By then, we would gladly trade the muggy awfulness of July for snowy weather. No matter what happens, we won’t be prepared for it or happy about it in the moment.
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Science may (have to) catch up. Weather prediction apps may have to become more rigorous to notify us accurately in advance of drastic weather. Drastic weather is a foregone conclusion. Knowing about it well enough in advance is key. We already know it’s going to be rough, regardless of whatever the season is. What we need is a way to prepare far enough in advance to keep people safe and make informed decisions before it is too late.
North Carolina, at least our part of the state, has been fairly fortunate over the years. We have had “bad weather” but not to the degree that other states routinely get it. Hurricanes have usually lost some of their bluster by the time they sweep up the eastern seaboard to us. We get snow, but it is rarely catastrophic. We might get tornadoes, but they are probably not going to be anything like what will touch down in Tornado Alley. We get forest fires, but nothing on par with the monstrous conflagrations that burn hundreds of acres an hour elsewhere. In short, we’re extremely fortunate. At least we have been until this year, when Hurricane Helene hit the state from the south and took a hard left over the mountainous western region of NC.
In just a few days, torrential rains caused mudslides that washed away major interstate highways and county lanes alike. Rivers flooded and washed away low-lying neighborhoods. Telephone and power poles came down like dropped matchsticks. The winds left trees bare of leaves and branches. Others were snapped in half or wrenched from the ground. Debris and destruction remained. Whole towns were submerged. Chimney Rock and Lake Lure, tiny towns on the Broad River were washed away. It is impossible to put into a few words how that storm affected the residents of our state or how devastating it truly was. Between when the first rain fell and now, 104 North Carolinians were killed or died as a direct result of the storm. Thousands more were without power or access to clean water for months.
Our middle son and his wife and daughter endured an Odyssey-like escape from the destruction, winding through neighboring states and going miles and hours out of the way to find safe roads, but finally got to our house on September 29th. This past weekend, his wife and our granddaughter were finally able to make plans to return to their home. After almost four months, though, things are still not “back to normal”. They will now have to live in constant fear of the word “hurricane”.
And this is just here in NC. Other states have fared far worse.
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We have no way to know what will happen next. 2025 has already been an unquiet year. The groundhog has yet to make his predictions but regardless of what he sees, we will have six more weeks of winter that could continue to be dangerously cold and snowy. Time will tell. Without an accurate and reliable way to see what is coming. We’ve put a man on the moon, for heaven’s sake. I think we can begin to focus on the urgency of weather prediction without it becoming a battle of partisan political proportions.
Given the increasingly erratic and severe weather patterns we face, the need for accurate, long-range forecasting is no longer a matter of convenience, but of survival. We may marvel at the sudden appearance of snow in Louisiana or find ourselves inconvenienced by late-season blizzards. Localized events are but small indicators of a larger, more ominous trend. From devastating droughts and wildfires in California to the unprecedented hellscape left in the wake of Helene in North Carolina, the atmospheric message is clear: our planet is changing and changing rapidly. Whether we fully understand the causes or not, we must acknowledge the reality of this shift and invest in the scientific tools and infrastructure, safety and preparedness education necessary to navigate this new climate reality. The ability to anticipate and prepare for extreme weather events is not just a scientific challenge; it's a fundamental requirement for ensuring the safety and well-being of communities across the globe in the 21st Century.