Well… we’ve had some snow this winter, haven’t we? AND some cold, just like we had some extreme cold last year (which, despite all those extreme low temperatures, was STILL the fourth-hottest year ever recorded… so that deep cold does more to PROVE global warming than to DISprove it).
*Anyhow, the point I’m wandering toward is that in the past we’ve had some winters that were memorable, or even historical.
*Last year an ice jam forced the Conhocton River into the streets of Campbell.
*In January 1996 we got snow, then ice, then rain, which meant that the streams and rivers backed up. Badly. Kanona got clobbered especially hard.
*In March of 1993 it snowed on a Saturday, and school reopened on Thursday. People used their windows, rather than doors, to get in and out.
*A three-day blizzard in 1977 dropped as much as a hundred inches of snow in some places. Unsurprisingly the Buffalo area suffered worst, including 23 deaths.
*The winter of 1957-58 saw deep DEEP snow all through the region. Kids in Prattsburgh played on snowdrifts that were so high, the kids could reach above the telephone lines.
*In 1950, snow broke down the Wildcat Hollow Bridge in the Town of Hornby.
*The winter of 1939-40 was the first winter of the Second World War, and it was an extremely snowy season. Snow still lay on the ground in April, parked cars were buried up to the tops of their tires, and the girls at Davenport Orphanage in Bath went to school by sleigh for a week.
*The Great War winter of 1917-18 saw significant snow, and extremely low temperatures, even as people suffered coal and food shortages because of the war.
*Ice jams flooded Painted Post four feet deep in December, 1901, and temperatures were below zero.
*A two-day blizzard in 1890 stopped the trains as well as blocking the roads. Two feet of snow fell.
*In January of 1877, over five feet of snow fell between one thaw and the next. It crushed a church in Corning, wrecking it beyond repair.
*Methodists used to have a church in Curtis, between Campbell and Coopers Plains. Supposedly more Coopers people attended, so one January night in 1860 they went out and stole the church (yes), sliding it downstream along the thick-frozen Conhocton River.
*None of this quite matched 1816, “the year without a summer.” Snow fell and frost formed in every month of the year. Streams around here were still frozen in April, and froze again in October. Crops didn’t grow, or died in the field and on the vine. People feared that the sun was going out, and wondered if the end of the world was upon them. We now know that the sun’s rays were partly blocked by clouds of dust from a huge volcano eruption. The following summer went back to normal, and the world rejoiced.