March Madness

It's a glorious time in the Midwest - a time when all hearts and souls focus on basketball. High school, college, and most everyone else. Except this year when people held their breath to try to figure out where former Colt quarterback Peyton Manning would end up. And so it will be the Denver Broncos and now focus is back to basketball.

But I want to focus on something else - the March Madness of 2012 weather in Indiana. I thought it might be interesting to compare our 2012 weather to New York City winter in March 1888. As noted in the picture above, the Big Apple enjoyed a bit of snow in mid-March.  As much as 58 inches in one storm. There were 400 or so people who died, and there were damages estimated as high as 25 million in 1888 dollars (over a billion dollars in modern money) The storm produced winds as high as 80 miles per hours, creating snow drifts as high as 52 feet.

Then there was the time in my lifetime in New York State around 1940 when we had a snowstorm in which we had to use snowshoes to get to town because the snowplows couldn't get to our house. And the time in Rensselaer, Indiana when we had so much snow we had to cancel church three weeks out of four because churches were inaccessible for weeks at a time. When we were first able to make our way to some of them we had to drive on single lane roads with snowbanks on the side almost twice the height of our car. In Kokomo, Indiana we had an occasion where we couldn't get from our apartment into town for several days and Joyce couldn't get to get job in Marion (fifty miles away) for a week.

But then there is the year 2012 - another record setting weather year. Not for snow and cold -- just the opposite - warmth. It's been a really mild winter. And now it's mid-March. I venture to say we are

having Spring a month early and here is where we are this first day of Spring.  I'll take it but we do that with big question - It's great this year -- but what about Winter 2013? We shall see - but like I say, it's wunnerful this year.