&uot;Well, we dodged the bullet,&uot; I heard one of my neighbors say after another blizzard just missed us.

Wednesday, February 20, 2002

&uot;Well, we dodged the bullet,&uot; I heard one of my neighbors say after another blizzard just missed us.

&uot;We’re leading a charmed life,&uot; I replied.

My wife, The Queen B, had been watching the storm come in on our computer. She was concerned that we appear to have been targeted by Old Man Winter and his minions. My wife is &uot;Weather Central&uot; in our house. She does all of my weather worrying for me. I am a good Minnesotan and she is a wise one.

She hollered at me and made me look at the image of the storm on the screen of the computer monitor. I looked at it. It appeared to be a large and colorful storm. I am not exactly sure what color it was as I had such a deprived childhood that I had only the eight-pack of Crayola Crayons.

The storm was bragged up on the radio as a sure Hall-of-Famer. There would be no place for us to hide, as the storm was ubiquitous. I stared at the ever-changing blob of winter woes being sent our direction as it appeared on the monitor. I nodded gravely, while grunting several times in the hopes that my wife would believe that I truly understood the gravity of the situation. I didn’t really grasp the situation at all.

The more refined our weather predicting capabilities become, the less accurate they are proving to be. There are winters when the &uot;storm of the century&uot; has been forecast every other week. Weathermen love bad weather. That is what they live for. I hear the weather report often given a name like &uot;Accu-weather&uot; in order to convince us of the unerring accuracy of the predictions.

In an effort to appease my better half, I batten down the hatches, so to speak. After hearing those dire reports, I stock up on necessary food items like beef jerky and cinnamon Altoids. I notify my next of kin. I always do this whenever my wife expects me to do any shoveling of snow. I push a comfortable old chair to a prime place in front of the picture window. A prime location to watch a &uot;storm of the century&uot; unfold. A perch to monitor the vicious winter storm. My faithful canine companion, Towhee, joins me as I gaze out the window watching for the big storm to hit. She calms her blizzard apprehension by pretending to watch squirrels. Towhee and I are willing to risk snowblindness to see the end of civilization as we know it.

As I wait, I think back to some of the storms I have known. Most of you have experienced some of those nasty days. To me, those blizzards always made me feel as though I were in an old black-and-white photo. You know the kind. You have seen some of them in an old family photo album. There were always some winter photos with a person or two thrown in to show how deep the snow was. Some of them were people who wore long underwear all year. The people in the photos always had that dazed look -&160;like they had just spent an entire weekend watching televised football.

My dog and I were ready to play our part in a new photo. Towhee and I polished off our supply of beef jerky while waiting, but often no storm materialized. The great storm was supposed to move in, but we should never mistake movement for action.

We typically have many more storms predicted than actually occur. Now I am not complaining about this and I realize why the weather weenies do this. Our crack meteorologists predict a lot of storms because they do not want us to be surprised by a major storm. If they predict a blizzard and it doesn’t happen, most of us are not unhappy. We are relieved. As my friend said, &uot;We dodged the bullet.&uot; We smile and get on with our lives. We winter well. Have you noticed that most meteorologists are married men? That’s because married men are used to being wrong. Most of us get an odd joy from a meteorologist’s incorrect forecast. But just let the meteorologists not predict a winter whopper and one hits us. We are not happy campers. We do not enjoy that kind of a surprise.

We want to know bad weather is coming whether it gets here or not. We are Minnesotans -&160;give us the bad news and we will let you know that it could be worse.

Hartland resident Al Batt writes columns for the Wednesday and Sunday editions of the Tribune.