Enjoying the Mother of All Winters from 7,000 Miles Away

April 7, 2003
By GREGORY J. RUMMO

GUANGZHOU -- "Like some cold-blooded, malevolent python, winter continues to coil itself around the Northeast. A post-winter polar high packing a mid-winter chill is setting the stage for yet another round of ice and snow tomorrow as a storm center from the Ohio Valley is expected to leapfrog to the mid-Atlantic coast and challenge the chilly air mass with a phalanx of moisture…"

So read the forecast summary for April 6 on Weather.com. The Mother of All Winters won't let up.

The only time I like snow is when it falls on someone else, in a different part of the country, or if it falls in my neighborhood when I am somewhere else far, far away. As has been the case for several snowstorms this winter I find myself far removed from this week's spring surprise.

My heart is breaking.

As New Jerseyans enjoyed yet another day of white knuckle commutes on icy roads and most students got the day off, I was sitting comfortably in my hotel room over 7,000 miles away with my family in the People's Republic of China where it's hot and steamy in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province.

It is fitting that what is most likely the last snowstorm of the winter of 2002-2003 should occur at a time when I am nowhere near home. In fact, it is a vignette of a charmed winter when I lucked out on more than one occasion and missed the big storms entirely.

It all started during the first week of December when I was on a business trip in Arizona. Two of my customers are located in Phoenix where the folks there define a blizzard as heavy frost on their windshields in the morning.

When I left home for Arizona at the beginning of the week, the first major snowstorm for the northeast was forecasted for the day I was scheduled to return. Four days later my wife and two sons were cleaning almost a foot of snow from our driveway while I was helplessly stranded under sunny blue skies and balmy temperatures in the mid-70s in the Arizona desert.

Aw shucks!

I also missed the Mother of All Blizzards in February when business called again-this time to the Midwest. While my family struggled at home with over two feet of snow, I was in Kansas City where it was sunny and in the 50s.

Not everyone agrees with my disdain for snow and every now and then a reader lets me know about it. 

Peggy lives in Crandon Lakes in Hampton Twp. She wrote to tell me how much she loves the snow. She sent me a copy of "Snow Day," a column she wrote in which she waxes eloquent. "Since I live in NJ, some kind of winter is inevitable so since it has to be winter it should snow otherwise it is wasted months of gray and brown."

Her brother, mother and sister-in-law are traveling with us in China. When she read one of my recent columns which mentioned our adoption itinerary, she put two and two together and surmised they must be traveling with us.

As a new aunt, she's looking forward to meet Min Ru (Alyssa), her niece. She'll soon be home along with the rest of the family who, by the way, has enough good sense to make their home in Florida.

Her brother, John grew up in NJ and he can't quite wean himself from the white powder.

He visits his sister every other year during Christmas. Unfortunately for him, this was his "off year" so he missed the Christmas Day storm that threw a wrench into everybody's plans including ours. The prior year when he was up for the holidays, there was no snow as was the case two years before that.

John is desperate to see some snow. On March 6 he e-mailed his sister, "It'd be really, really neat if it'd snow right before we get back from China around April 9."
He might get his wish this week if the weather stays nasty. He might also get a little more than his wish. His sister sent me an e-mail that included this reminder for me to deliver to her brother: "Tell John his 'designated shovel' is awaiting his arrival."

Maybe John and Peggy can shovel snow together while singing "Let it Snow." Go ahead, knock yourselves out. Let it snow. Just let me be far, far away when it does. n

Gregory J. Rummo is a syndicated columnist. Read all of his columns on his homepage, www.GregRummo.com. E-Mail Rummo at  GregoryJRummo@aol.com