'Bring it on!' winter-baiters get their blizzardy wish

Internet posters summed up the attitude best back on Dec. 20 after reading a column in which I already was longing for spring.

"Sick of winter?" Master Debater roared. "Pack up your (junk) and move south. I'm not stopping you. Pansy."

Fellow reader choppedliver made a George W. Bush-like taunt.

"Bring it!" choppedliver said, baiting Old Man Winter. "Anyone who has grown up in the Midwest should understand this is normal."

Bringing on a blizzard for our morning commute is not normal. Blizzards, the combination of falling snow and ferocious winds, don't happen every winter. As for snow -

"We are running way ahead of normal," says Edward Fenelon, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "I remember the winters of the late 1970s. Those were impressive. This is almost a throwback to that, almost."

In our snowiest winter season of 1978-79, the skies dumped 89.7 inches of snow for us to shovel. That broke the previous record of 82.3 inches set the winter before.

At this point in that snowbound winter, 39.7 inches of snow had fallen. Before this latest snow this season, we had 36.7 total inches of snow. That's only 3 inches off the record pace, and more than double our usual amount by this time of year. More snow is expected Wednesday.

"It would not be unreasonable to say we are on track to get 70 inches of snow this year, which would make this the fourth snowiest," Fenelon says. "We're certainly on a pace to be in the top 10 snowiest."

Even if we didn't get another flake this winter, 2008-09 would still be snowier than 71 of our winters since we started keeping records in 1884, Fenelon adds.

Oh, and it's cold, too.

Tuesday night temperatures are expected to plunge to zero or below, making this our fourth day of the winter where the thermometer hit zero or below. We could see more of the same on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

"In the grand schemes of things from a historical perspective, this has not been that cold of a winter," Fenelon says.

While he checks the records, he puts me on hold, where I am subjected not to soothing Muzak, but to an ominous blizzard warning of 35-mph winds, blinding snow, ridiculous wind chills and icy road conditions that all add up to an "extremely dangerous" situation.

We had 33 days of zero or below in 1963, and we had a record 10 days in a row of subzero temperatures in 1912, Fenelon says.

Having written a passel of "coldest day ever" weather stories on Jan. 10 of 1982 as I cruised the minus-26-degree suburban tundra in my icy LeCar, I remember feeling a little dejected when we set a new 27-below-zero record on Jan. 20, 1985. (Not sure how I escaped that assignment.)

The point of all this reminiscing is that, bad as it seems, we've had snowier and colder days and winters. The blizzard that was predicted to muck up this morning's rush hour probably still won't top the stifling 23-inch snowstorm we endured on Jan. 26-27 of 1967.

Still, this winter can't be dismissed as chopped liver. (My apologies to choppedliver, the Internet poster.)

This winter is -

"I'm hesitant to say the word brutal, but-" Fenelon says. He asks readers to visit www.weather.gov/chicago for all the nasty details and tips on how to cope with today's weather.

"Meteorologists love weather and we love active weather," Fenelon admits. "But at the same time, it's tempered with trying to drive in it."

Bone-numbing cold, heavy show and a windy blizzard can be challenging, but the good news is that it's easy to write about.