Are we all enjoying the return of winter?
Snow? Well, snow was indeed predicted. This is because of the return of La Nina, the “southern weather oscillation” event that bounces back and forth, unpredictably it seems, between El Nino and La Nina. Each of these weather events out in the Pacific Ocean impacts weather right across North America.
So, this year, the onset of a La Nina period was forecast to bring lots and lots of snow into Alberta. And cooler weather!
But there was, or is, a slight problem. Namely, the snow was forecasted o come in January and February. Yoiks! So, what the heck does that mean now, since we already have more snow in the last couple of weeks than probably all of the last three winters all put together? Your guess is as good as the weather experts out there.
Right about now is when we miss our long term forecaster, the late Ray Tallman of Grouard. Ray kept his secret methods mostly to himself. Mostly, it all had to do with reading animal signs as we came into upcoming seasons. Ray says he put those together with weather patterns he noticed, and how wild animals, and even plants and trees, were all preparing themselves. Sort of like the Farmer’s Almanac but Ray was our own Northern Alberta forecaster. Better than the Almanac, too.
Never mind the snow! What about that freezing rain that seems to come around in-between our freezing cold snaps?
Last week, your columnist was coming back from Edmonton.
The temperature was a tropical 0 C. Heading north to Slave Lake, right on the outskirts of St. Albert, just north of the underpass, cars and trucks littered the ditches. This was about 11 a.m. A sprinkling of freezing rain and for some reason, no sand trucks had sprinkled about a kilometre stretch of road here. About 15 vehicles in the snow.
And from the looks of traffic speeding on the divided highway toward St. Albert as we went farther north, there were going to be lots more also caught by surprise.
Eventually, as we went even further north, people were wising up to road conditions. North of Westlock the road was still bad. There, a semi was in the ditch, and the southbound lane was closed by some kind of head-on that had two vehicles smashed, and police and ambulance on the scene.
For us, what is usually a three-hour trip north to home took over five hours.
As the cartoon goes, two folks are going through the snow in the dark of night. The driver says to his co-pilot, “It sure is nice driving out here. Everybody stayed home. We got the whole road all to ourselves.”
They pass by a vehicle in the ditch. Shotgun says to the driver, “There’s somebody who didn’t stay home.”
Driver says with a big grin, “Sure. But he’s off the road!”
Keep in mind folks, winter driving calls for extra, extra safety.
“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.” – Charles Schulz
If you tune into certain TV channels often enough, you start to notice, as one commenter on TV said himself, “They can’t seem to say 26 words without saying ‘Trump.’”
Of course, then once they have the topic in hand, they have to go on to say how bad the orange man really is. No wonder it’s called TDS – Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Democrats down in the States keep asking themselves, how the heck did we lose when Trump is such an obviously bad person?
Many people say one answer is obvious, the past election which Trump won didn’t have suitcases and semi-trailers full of fake ballots rolling up to be counted when Joe Biden got elected. This time around, too many people were keeping an eye on things. Hmmm!
Another answer is it never crosses the minds of any Democrats that people were not really voting FOR Trump. They were voting AGAINST the mind-stupifying incompetence of Democrats.
Just a few examples are Democrats saying, “They were mostly peaceful protests” while cities burned. Or, “The borders are closed.” while videos showed thousands of illegals streaming across from Mexico every day.
It is amazing that in just barely one year, Trump has cleaned up many of the worst problems in both the United States, and around the world. It looks like Ukraine and Iran are both proving to be tougher nuts to crack. It still has to be said, it is amazing what politicians can actually do when they want to.
And when they finally get it through their thick heads normal values of people, like just being conservative, law abiding and honest, and wanting to make a decent living, are at least as important, if not more so, than wokeism and saving the world from climate change.
“So, there’s no milk in the fridge? Walk to the store. It’s all of two minutes away. In my day, if we ran out of milk, we had to wait until your grandmother gave birth again.” – Grandpa Jonesy
“In my day we never had any of this virtual reality. If a one-eyed, big toothed slobbering green giant monster was chasing us with an axe, we had to just hope we could outrun it.” – Grandma Smithers