Loran Smith: When it comes to weather, there is no month more fickle than March

With the coming of March, this means that we are likely to experience the ficklest weather, from warm and temperate days to a foot of snow or more.

Having grown up in middle Georgia, I can only remember one snowstorm that allowed about an inch of snow to collect, which brought about finger snapping longevity for the snowman we built.  We hardly had time to place a corncob pipe in his mouth.

Then I got to Athens and heard about “snow days” from upperclassmen, who informed us from the hinterlands that if it snowed enough to collect on the ground there was a great chance that classes would be called off for a couple of days.

Snow days were for snowball fights and makeshift sleds to slide down hills where trees were scarce.  When that came about, the snow day became a party day.  There was plenty of beer to drink as the frolic lasted deep into the night.

I had never seen such a sight in all my life, the campus under a picturesque blanket of snow. I swooned to the snow-white beauty of North campus.

That is an exciting and inspiring landscape any time of the year, but when it is covered by a couple of inches of snow, there is something special about its gleaming appearance.

One football player was caught up in a good-news-bad-news circumstance. He put on his cleats, which enabled him to climb a hill to easily guide his sled — a round oversized Coca-Cola sign — downhill, but when his foot was caught in a grassy knoll near the bottom, he tore tendons in his ankle and lost out on a free agent contract with an NFL team.

I remember there was a big snowstorm in March 1960. The Internet says there was 5 inches on March 5. It was also a time of sadness with the popular Bulldog line coach, J. B. Whitworth, passing away.

The snow was melting when the funeral procession reached the gravesite at the Oconee Hill Cemetery. I was at the burial and was very sad. I knew how much the players admired him and respected him and later realized that he was the glue that was responsible for the bonding that made the Georgia team the surprise of the Southeastern Conference in 1959, when the Bulldogs won the SEC title over the heavyweights and heavily favored teams of LSU, Ole Miss and Auburn.

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As the hearse pulled up and the family gathered for the final rites, the snow was melting in bright sunshine. Coach Whit had helped bring sunshine to Georgia in his short stay and one sensed that we were enduring a great loss.

Through the years, I have an image of snowstorms in northeast Georgia coming about in March. How about 1993 when a blizzard dumped up to 35 inches in some parts?

Then there was the “Snowpocalypse” of 2014 which paralyzed Atlanta for days. That was unforgettable. When the precipitation turns to ice and we lose power, then those are the worst of times.

March will make us smile some days and then give us the back of its hand just as we enjoy a cup of coffee on the patio. The bright red cardinal, Stan Musial, returned last weekend, bringing about feelings of warmth as temperatures in the 30s made you start a fire and reach for a book.

I have learned that no month is fickler than March when it comes to weather. Then there are the March winds. We know they are coming; we just don’t know when.

Wind is the bane of all outdoor activities unless you are flying a kite. Wind can make you miserable when you are fishing, and it sours the day for golf and baseball.

There is good news, however, about March. We can count on some balmy pockets of sunshine and benign winds. Eventually, April shows up. Then we must worry about tornados. 

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: March is a fickle month with hot and cold days for weather