As I write this column at 9:30 on Friday morning, the day before publication, it's snowing again. This is the third Friday in a row we've had frozen precipitation.

Two weeks ago, the precipitation was in the form of freezing rain, which no one wants. Even though the trees looked beautiful as they were encased in ice, the beauty was deceiving because of the damage being done.

Folks all over this part of the country suffered severe tree damage as the result of that storm. The only positive consequences were the inch- plus of liquid moisture we received before the temperature hit freezing and that the icing wasn't severe enough to knock out power, at least for most of us.

 

Last Friday was a totally different story. The rain changed to snow quickly and snow it did, all day long. Heavy, wet flakes were falling at the rate of an inch an hour and some of those flakes were as big as half dollars.

We had plenty of prior warning in regard to last week's storm so my son Michael, who is visiting me from Arkansas, and I made two trips to Wal-Mart to stock up on everything we thought we would need, because it didn't look like we were going to leave the house for a few days.

When the snow started, we opened up the curtains that look out over our third-floor deck, made up some coffee, hot chocolate and hot apple cider, sat back and just enjoyed the view.

As most of you know, we had over a foot of snow on Friday and then a few more inches fell on Saturday night. As heavy as the snow was in McCook, we still got off light when you look at some of the amounts our neighbors to the south had. Colby, Kan., reported 19 inches, Oberlin had 24 inches, and Sharon Springs, Kan., an amazing 32 inches of snow. It was truly an historic snowfall for this part of the country.

 

There are good things and bad things about a heavy snowfall like the one we had and it just depends on your perspective as to how you see and define it. Kids generally love snow.

They get caught up in the majesty and the beauty of it because it does appear to be almost a miraculous event. They have snowball fights, they go sledding, mom makes them snow ice cream, and, if it snows at the right time, they get out of school too. No such luck with getting out of school for last weeks snow since school was already out for the holidays. But the kids in my neighborhood seemed to enjoy it just the same.

 

It's even possible for adults to enjoy a beautiful snowfall too if their situation permits it. Since the college was also out, I didn't have to worry about battling the street conditions to get to work. That meant that while Michael was alternating between hot chocolate and hot apple cider, I was able to top my coffee off with a little Irish Cream, and enjoy the spectacle of the heavy falling snow with him. Those of you who had to battle the street conditions to get to work, or those of you who had to actually work out in the snow most likely didn't enjoy it nearly as much as we did.

My sympathy and appreciation goes out to the city street crews who, I'm sure, did as much as they could do to get at least some of the streets partially cleared.

We didn't venture out in my vehicle until four days later and most of the streets were still a mess, with some being almost impassable, so consequently, most of the people I talked to didn't have many nice things to say about the city's ability to make the streets drivable again. In fact, several accidents were reported that were directly due to people making blind turns and being ran into because their view of traffic coming from the opposite direction was obscured because the snow was piled so high.

I don't know what the city's budget is for snow removal and I don't know how many employees were assigned to that task so I'm not going to criticize.

I do disagree, however, with the city officials who praised the street department for doing a "wonderful" job of clearing the streets because that sure wasn't my experience but, at the same time, I suppose they did all they could do with the resources they had.

In addition to the street problems, most of us spent Sunday without any football to watch on television since the two networks that carry pro football, Fox and CBS, were both knocked off the local cable system. We also missed a couple of the BCS college bowl games because of that outage and that had a lot of sports fans gnashing their teeth.

On the other hand, the significant moisture we've received in the past two weeks has been a godsend for those people in our area who live off the land.

 

So, like about anything else that happens in our lives, some people like it and some people don't. People selling cold-weather gear, shovels, boots, snow-blowers, wrecker services and snow-removal and plowing services love it. Those who have to drive through it to get to work or those who have to work out in it, or those who are negatively affected by it in some other way don't.

It's the same thing with tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, and any other thing you can conjure up in your mind. In a market-based economy, some people are always going to make a profit, often times at the expense of others.

 

Finally, a snowfall is always special to me because the love of my life and I used to talk about taking a day off work together when it snowed so we could just go walking in it together, holding hands, enjoying the almost magical solitude a soft-falling snow provides, and enjoying its beauty and its grace together.

Although we never got to do it, I do it with her in my heart and in my mind every single time it snows.