John McLoone

I knew the weekend snowfall was going to come before most of you.

In fact, I knew about it before many so-called weather experts.

A few weeks ago, I attended a high school basketball game. It was a gorgeous day outside but not so much inside. The gym was packed. It was hot.

That led me to my destiny as one who knows what this spring weather will be like.

I had to get out of that gym, so I found a table in the cafeteria outside of it and sat down. There was one gentleman already sitting there. I believe this was a situation where it was some kind of destiny that led me to this empty chair. You’ll get chills too when I recount the opening exchange:

Me: “Isn’t this weather crazy?”

Older fellow: “Heed my warning. It shall not last. Warn the others.”

That isn’t really what he said, but that’s how he would have said it maybe if we were in a movie about a nice spring that was going to turn not so nice. My part was being played by Brad Pitt. He was a wizard guy with a long flowing beard, wearing a tunic and holding a staff. Maybe that’s going a little too far. I would have never sat down at a table with anyone like what I just described.

As it was, it was just a sweaty news reporter and a nice guy, and the nice guy had spent the evening before reading the Farmer’s Almanac.

“It’s not going to be nice for long,” he told me. “Farmer’s Almanac said there’s going to be a lot of precipitation at the end of March, and it’s going to be a cold, wet spring.”

I’ll admit, I didn’t heed his warning. I didn’t, at that time, hold much stuck in this Farmer’s Almanac. I hold it in about the same regard as many so-called meteorologists who waste about a third of the evening news to tell us what the weather was like today, what it was like a year ago and how hot and cold it’s ever been. They waste time leading up to their so-called forecast because they know they’ve lulled you to sleep by then. They put up maps with lines going all kinds of directions, and then the best they can do is guess at what it will be like tomorrow.

When I was a kid, I figured out the science of meteorology. We lived in Wisconsin. My mom’s sister lived in Minnesota. On Sunday nights, they’d talk on the phone. Inevitably, the conversation would contain information about the weather that day in Minnesota. We knew, with pretty much the same likelihood of the weather person on TV, that we were going to have their weather the next day. I had cracked the code on figuring out the weather. It goes west to east. As long as you live east of somewhere, you’re pretty much going to be able to predict your weather.

So that fateful day when I sat at that table, I already had some knowledge about how things work. I live by one mantra: Don’t Trust Big Weather.

Now, coupled with the information that soothsayer gave me on that fateful day at that basketball game, and I know I have a responsibility to start sharing more.

Here goes: It’s going to be cold until it isn’t. If it’s going to rain and it’s cold, that will lead to snow. Eventually it will warm up, but it will be cold until that happens. Wear a coat. Take it off if you get too hot.

Heed the warning.