What’s the best that can be said about this cursed winter season of 2010/2011? That at least the cumulative snow amounts haven’t reached the historic totals of the winter of 1995-1996 – at least not yet!

Remember that year? Mountains of snow remained in pockets all over the city well into mid-April, and the daily newspapers ran contests asking readers to “Guess-timate” the last day and hour when the melt would be complete.

This vexing season of snow, cold, and ice made January seem like the longest month of the year, as each week, it seemed, brought one or more “snow events,” each adding an additional layer to the piles already covering the neighborhoods. Some optimists among us always look forward to Feb. 2 – Ground Hog Day – for in recent years, that seemed to be the day when Mother Nature flipped a switch, the day temps regularly settled somewhere above freezing, and the storms that churned up the eastern seaboard lashed the coastal areas, including Boston, with rain rather than the white stuff.

Why wasn’t it just last year that we heard a neighbor remark that he only had to use the snow blower two or three times, and that most of the snowfalls could simply be broomed away?

This year, alas, not so much.

For this year’s calamitous winter, many of us have a new favorite pastime: We flip from TV station to TV station, listening to the weather prognosticators give their own projection of snowfall amounts. For this week’s one-two punch, Channel 4 was predicting 10-16, Channel 5 was saying12-18, and the guesses at Channels 7 and 25 were that the total amount could reach 20 inches by the time things settled down this morning.

At this writing everything’s up in the air, but by now, dear reader, you know what the actual totals were.
Meanwhile, we’ve developed a special fondness for the meteorologists who predict the least amount of accumulation. They might turn out to be dead wrong, but the mere suggestion that the precip might turn to rain as far north as Boston is enough to develop a warm and fuzzy feeling for the channel that gives us that prediction.

For now, abandon not all hope. The 2011 Ground Hog Day doubleheader has come and gone, and one of the weather guys said this morning that temps will rise into the low 40’s sometime next week.
Also please note: In Ireland, Feb. 1 is the feast of St. Bridget and is considered the first day of spring. Also, pitchers and catchers report to Fort Myers in just 14 days.

That is, of course, if they’re able to dig out.

– Ed Forry