The weather bureau was wrong. They predicted a nice January. We printed their prediction in “The Mountaineer” and ended up looking like we knew not much of anything to trust them in the first place.
Just as we were recovering from that mistake, I was driving to Big Sandy early one morning before dawn. I was listening to a radio station in Great Falls and, as it had been cold, the station announcer had weather on his mind.
Here is what got to me. All the stations from Cutbank to Chinook and south to Helena and Lewistown reported above zero readings that particular morning. The day before all had reported readings of ten below zero to twenty below zero. In other words, warm air was sliding into our country slow but sure. Now you would think that was something to report and talk about.
But oh, no, instead the man got his crazy wind chill chart out and reported that actually counting wind chill factors, it was actually colder out that morning than the morning before.
I thought about that announcer when I got to work. It had to be one of maybe three or four things that made him crazed with wind chills. Maybe he wanted people to think that is was just cold out no matter what the thermometer said. Maybe he had a very bad morning at home and wanted all the rest of us to share in his misery. Or maybe he wanted us to all be happy that we could survive when it was 34 below as it was that morning if one counted wind chill factors in Chinook.
I have said for years and years that if our ancestors had to contend with wind chill factors, whether they lived on the Marias in teepees or on Mount Reynolds in a one room dug out, they would not have made it. When Grandpa Lucke got here in 1903, if he woke up one of those January mornings and someone told him it was twenty below but really it was forty below, well, I cannot help but think that he would have been long gone.
So, an announcement to all you radio and television announcers out there, if it is warmer than yesterday at all reporting stations, that is good news. Share that with the rest of us. Don’t just make it so that we all want to leave and never come back because that is what you do with your phony wind chill chart!
