Short weather story

ONE OF THE things I dreaded when I was a reporter was doing weather stories. It would snow overnight and the next morning I'd get an email with "WEATHER - Quincy gets its first snow of the year. Talk to real people about real issues with snow. WITH PIC. RH."

So I'd get on the weather web sites, call somebody at Farm & Home about snow shovels or the local grocery store about panicking in the diary aisle, maybe find somebody who slid into a ditch, and my byline would be on the front page. One year a copy editor wrote HUGE STORM DUMPS 5 INCHES OF SNOW" and I thought, man, 5 inches of snow is just a nice day in early June where I'm from in Michigan.

There were true snowmageddon events in Quincy. One year I remember doing a video with Mary Poletti of The Whig about a massive storm about the hit Quincy. Why it didn't win an Emmy or Tony or Slammy or some kind of award is beyond me. And of course it wasn't archived, because heaven forbid there'd be any video evidence of my 16 years at The Whig.

Another year I rode on I-72 with an Illinois State Police Trooper after a huge snow shut down the highway and pretty much life itself for three days. It was strange seeing all the vehicles in the median and nobody on the road.

Massive snow at Fifth and Maine .... not.

Look. It snowed last night. Our new puppy pranced around in it and thought it was great. Weather is a big deal and everybody has to deal with it, so it's understandable why we had to write so many stories about it. But all I really had to do was write "Weather - it sucks. Slow down. Have a nice day." And it would be just as good as a 15 inch fluff story about the first snow of the year.

Be careful. Slow down. The snow will be gone tomorrow. The end.

See? I still have this newspaper thing down pat!