WEATHER WISE, WEATHER WEARY, WEATHER VANE
By Jim Zola Jim.zola@ci.high-point.nc.us 

Simple concepts are sometimes the most complex to explain. Colors, shapes, taxes. Let's say you are trying to teach a 2 or 3 year-old the differences between the seasons ˆ spring, summer, fall, and winter. Since the next season we happen to be heading into is Winter, let's say we are explaining to this child what makes Winter different than the other seasons. It is cold and we wear more clothing. OK. More explanation is needed. Let's hit the books to better illustrate the definition. The books we have at our house include:

The Mitten by Jan Brett

Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan London

Happy Day by Ruth Krauss

The Snowman by Raymond Briggs

So what's wrong with this picture? Well, this particular three year-old happens to live in North Carolina where we haven't seen a real snowfall for many years. Not in her lifetime. So she has these images of Winter being icicles and snowmen and sleigh rides when in reality she has as much chance of seeing these things as well as a snowball in.. You know what I mean.

Let me take a few steps back from this situation and give you some background that might explain somewhat where my frustration with the images of Winter originates. I am not a Southerner born or raised. I grew up in real snow country, at the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains, where 100 inches of snow for a winter barely neither raised an eyebrow nor slowed a school bus.

Later, for college, I moved to Missouri where we had winters, but nothing as harsh as my hometown weather. Missouri tends to have at least on good show stopper every season. After that, I lived in Michigan. Here we had very long, very dark winters. Lots of black snow and toe freezing slush. What was unique about those Michigan Winters (and pleasing at first) was the lake-effect snow. We lived about an hour's drive from Lake Michigan. For at least a month each winter, we had snow flurries every day all day long. But it was as though this were movie prop snow, or snow from one of those glass snow globes with the winter wonderland scenes. Large fluffy wet flakes. And the strange thing was that it hardly ever accumulated to anything noticeable. It would snow all day long and there was nothing on the ground except perhaps a thin white veil covering the dirty fossilized snow packed so hard that often it remained throughout the Spring and into the early days of Summer. This phenomena was passed of as "lake-effect snow" with some vague reference to the big lake and wind and air temperatures and some other weatherman mumbo-jumbo. I never understood it.

The horror of Michigan Winters, the dark gray skies without end, the clouds with no sun for 8 months of the year, drove my family and myself to North Carolina, a state nearly the polar opposite of Michigan. Here the sun shines year round except for the occasional hurricane.

Which brings me back to the image and reality of winter in the land of sunshine. North Carolina winters were a surprise to us. Not because of the mild weather. But because of the total panic amongst the residents when the slightest chance of precipitation occurs. When a "winter storm" approaches these parts, 3 days in advance the nervous glances at the weather channel begin. Two days before, bread, milk and battery sections of the grocery store become akin to Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard. The video stores are packed. People hunker down for the siege. One day before, people take to their houses, hug one last time, settle squabbles, and make arrangements. Then storm day arrives. Most often what we get is more like half-frozen slushies rather than snow. On occasion, we have had daycares and schools closed at the chance of snow, only to wake to sunshine and green grass shining out the morning windows. To say the least, this northerner has been amused and slightly embarrassed for my friends, co-workers and neighbors.

But I digress. What I meant to address was the confusion a child here suffers when faced with the dilemma of discerning between winter weather in books and winter weather in reality. We teach our children that books are mostly right and good. But this weather thing.

So this is a call to publishers, authors and illustrators to give us more tales of green-grassed winters and slushy storms. Just a little help for all us snowless snow bunnies trying to describe a winter wonderland to a child who wonders how on earth the snow gets out of one of those magic snow globes to cover us all.
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