Uh oh, Rochester. We aren't even close to competing for this annual badge of honor
Listen up Rochester, we’ve got a problem.
Our weather the last few months, so snowless, so relatively warm, is a civic embarrassment, not worthy of our reputation as one of the snow capitals of the free world.
Good heavens, we’ve even had some clear blue skies of late, totally out of character for a city that has made gray its unofficial color.
On Easter Sunday, I walked outdoors, sans mittens, sans winter coat. I saw people trimming bushes, pruning trees. One guy was mowing his lawn, even though the grass hasn’t started to grow.
My favorite bench in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Geneseo was out of winter storage, another sure sign of spring.
Yes, the seasons have turned. Flowers are blooming; birds are returning, too. Baseball is back.
Have we earned all of this? Not in a million years.
Rough winters are our dues for glorious springs, the pain we pay to get the gain. For sure, our dues are due. We owe the fates, big time.
Rochester’s snowfall total for the past season is downright microscopic by normal standards. As I write, it’s stuck around 50 inches for the season, a shade over half of the average for this date.
We’re in fifth (dead last) place in the Golden Snowball contest, the annual lemonade-from-lemons contest in which you gain points for being buried in snow.
Rochester's weird winter: See the surprising 2022-23 snowfall total, temperatures
Buffalo is far ahead with 133.6 inches. Syracuse (65.6), Binghamton (61.5), and Albany (55), trail, beating Rochester, though not doing that well, either.
What do we tell sun-tanned friends who trickle back from wintering in Florida? Do we admit that the storms they ran from didn’t show up? Do we tell them that they could have stayed here, never shoveling, never scrapping, saving tons of cash?
Oh, we could say that winter was windier than normal.
I do remember some windy days. But was it windier than other winters? I don’t know, but let’s agree to declare it was.
In fact, we could just lie, make up a winter we didn’t have.
We could tell the snowbirds that the cold they swapped for the For -Myers heat was brutal.
Why, the temperatures were so far below zero that even Scott Hetsko was speechless.
Snow? More than we’ve ever seen.
Good heavens, the children climbed out of second-story windows, jumped into 10-foot drifts, had the time of their lives.
We slapped on skates, played hockey on the canal.
We roasted chestnuts over an open fire.
Snow days? We had a snow February. The whole month. Everything was shut down. Everything was remote.
We toughed all of this out without complaint. That’s just the way we are. Living in Rochester builds character. And, thanks to our strong character, we made it through the winter of 2022-23.
Now we welcome spring with open arms. We accept the warm days and gentle breezes. We’ve earned them. Keep saying that. After the winter we had, we’ve earned them. We really have.
Bean counters
If anything, our recent column on Grandma Brown’s baked beans underestimated the love for this summer staple that hasn’t been available since production was shut down during the early months of the pandemic in 2020.
Hundreds of commentators on the Democrat and Chronicle’s Facebook page wrote that they missed the beans. Some even passed along recipes for Grandma Brown tastealikes.
According to reports, productions was halted because of a lack of workers. No word yet on when, or if, the beans will be canned again.
From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott, writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rochester winter weather has us finishing last in Golden Snowball
