Ho hum, welcome to winter
By Ken Burger
I pulled a sweater over my head and glanced at the national weather report on television.
Snow in the Rockies.
A blizzard moving across the Midwest.
Winter storms forecast for the Northeast.
This is why we live in the Lowcountry.
While today's weather is not the greatest, chilly with showers, winter around here is nothing compared with what our friends "Up North" have to put up with.
Just for the record, in my vocabulary, "Up North" is anywhere north of Charlotte.
Perhaps this is not the best time to talk to them about global warming. They get cranky when you say you're playing golf while they're scraping ice off their windshields.
Truth is, those of us who grew up in the Lowcountry of South Carolina just don't do cold very well.
See our breath, we stay home.
Wear a coat, we lose it.
Mention snow, we close schools.
North of Charlotte
In my lifetime I've seen a million people from somewhere north of Charlotte move to the Palmetto State to enjoy our beauty and climate.
It used to be just retirees who finally were able to move south to enjoy their golden years. Some are half-backers from Florida, who yearned for a sense of seasons.
More recently, the migration includes young professionals following jobs to the Sun Belt and middle-aged entrepreneurs hoping to start over without a snow blower in their garage.
Once they spend a few seasons in the Lowcountry, enjoying our mild weather, almost all say they don't know if they could survive another winter in Buffalo. We don't know how they ever did.
Sure, it can dip down to freezing on some nights around here. That's when the weatherman tells us to bring in the cat and protect our tender vegetation. But that's pretty rare.
Mostly we make it through these winter months with daily highs in the 50s. Every now and then, we throw a log on the fire.
Prozac production
People who lived north of Charlotte for any length of time say it wasn't just the cold and snow that drove them south, but the gray.
The Midwest, I'm told, settles into a paralyzing pall from November to March that plays with your psyche. It's no coincidence, they say, that Eli Lilly, producer of the antidepressant Prozac, is headquartered in Indiana.
If that's not bad enough, my friends from the Northeast say they couldn't trust April either. Even May was suspect.
We, of course, take our nice, sunny weather for granted. It's part of the reason people who grew up north of Charlotte think we're so friendly.
I always tell them to enjoy our mild winters because we balance those temperate months with the Annual Humidity Festival in July and August.
They just look to the north with a faraway smile and say they don't mind the summer months because, while the heat can be harsh, at least you don't have to shovel it.
Reach Ken Burger at kburger@postandcourier.com or 937-5598.
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