I’m having a really hard time figuring out who to blame on this whole winter weather deal, but someone is going to pay for my suffering.  Oh, don’t misunderstand: It’s not because there’s been too much winter already.  No, no, no.  It’s my lack of traditional, Minnesota winter, year after year after year, that has me making phone calls, asking questions and in general, trying to get to the bottom of what I now firmly believe is . . . The Weather Conspiracy.

When my wife and I met many years ago in Los Angeles, we both came to the conclusion we missed having four seasons.  Specifically, we wanted to see snow in the winter. And I’m not talking about driving or flying to a ski resort to immerse ourselves in powder for a week and then be done with it.  No, we were tired of being cheated out of our winter snow so off we went to my hometown of Chicago.  Career-wise it worked and the weather — it was perfect.  Winter after winter, scenes of blizzards blanketing the Chicago lakefront, Michigan Avenue, etc. enticed us to head off to the Windy City. 

We lived in Chicago five years and in that time, we’d receive . . . an inch here, a flurry there and then, on the night of a major storm, two inches would come storming down us.  Two.  In Chicago.  Are you kidding me?  Meanwhile, up the road in Milwaukee, on the same night of one of our two-inch storms . . .

There they were, those damn Weather Channel guys telling us how Milwaukee had turned into a winter wonderland, receiving 16 inches of snow in four hours . . . . . . . and there was more on the way.  Great.  Wonderful.  Five years of Chicago snowfall that, in food terms, was as plentiful as birdseed for a vulture.  Where were the blizzards?  Where were the nights of double-digit snowfalls?  Well, they were 90 miles up the interstate in Milwaukee.  Our Chicago weather guys kept telling us, winter after winter, how the snowline was just north of us.  And they did it with a smile.  It was as if as they were saying it right to me . . . rubbing it in, and then laughing during commercial breaks knowing how badly I wanted snow.  I began having suspicions those wintry shots of Chicago I saw for so many years on The Weather Channel — phony.  All created in a computer.  So, having had enough, we had a new plan:  New York City.

While in Chicago, we saw endless shots of snow scenes in New York courtesy of, yes, The Weather Channel.  Surely those were real, right?  Looking like scenes from Miracle on 34th Street, there was Broadway, Central Park, Fifth Avenue . . . seeing it on television was magical bordering on surreal.  And knowing it was terrific for us both professionally, off we went. 

Upon arrival in New York, we were rewarded for our determination as snow-seekers: Our first winter produced a 31 inch snowfall (the official total was 22 but we received more where we lived).  The city was brought to its knees.  A half mile walk to the grocery store took us nearly 45 minutes; it was glorious.  When we got there, people were buying upwards of 15 dozen eggs, 10 gallons of milk, hundreds of rolls of toilet paper . . . the long, hard New York winter, rivaled only by winter in Siberia, had begun and, like those shots on television we had seen so often back in Chicago, we realized that finally, we had arrived at true Winter Tranquility.  Veteran New Yorkers in the store knew how to deal with winter and so we did what they did: We bought enough food and supplies to last us until we dug out in the summer.  After that delightful 31 inches, we received another two inches . . . over the next four months.  Something about low and high pressure fronts doing odd things when they got to the New York City area, changes in wind direction, warmer-than-normal temperatures, BUT . . . .

Just north of us, about 50 miles up the road in Connecticut, they got buried under snow seemingly twice-a-week.  And back in New York, our local weather guys gleefully told us how the “worst” of winter was missing us.  Meanwhile, there they were again, those smiling bastards from The Weather Channel, standing knee-deep in fresh powder, telling all of us how Connecticut was the visual of picture-perfect winter: Kids on sleds, parents hugging for pictures in front of snowmen, sleigh rides in historic, Charles Dickens-like towns in central Connecticut . . . it all made me ill.  But we had another plan . . .

While in New York, similar to when we were in Chicago, we made frequent visits to my wife’s home state of Minnesota.  It seemed we could go there in July and there would be snow on the ground; no doubt this was the reason for the Twins needing the Metrodome.  You can’t play baseball in June and get snowed out, right?  And certainly, whenever we saw shots of winter from there on television, there was always . . . always . . . snow on the ground.  Every time we’d watch The Weather Channel’s national map, Minnesota was in white.  No matter the month, it seemed Minnesota was always white, the forecast standard for Snow.  And so we thought, Minnesota.  No way we go wrong with Minnesota.  When you think Minnesota, you think snow, snow and more snow.  Nothing like a nice walk around the lake on a night in early August, a gentle snow falling . . . Life is Good in Minnesota.  Being that we’re native midwesterners, we packed up and moved to The State of Hockey and Ice Fishing: Minnesota!

It’s now eight years into The Minnesota Plan and I can count the aggregate snow total on less than two hands.  Ok, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.  Just tonight, I’m yet again watching The Weather Channel . . . when will I learn.  They’re telling us about a new snow storm that stretches from the Dakotas to the northern portion of Texas and goes as far west as Colorado and Wyoming.  Isn’t it reasonable to assume something this massive would not miss Minnesota?  Not a chance it misses us, right?  Yet there they are, smiling cheek-to-cheek while explaining the storm will apparently cut just a bit south of Minnesota, stopping at the Iowa-Minnesota state line.  And then, incredibly, the storm will expand north again curving into Wisconsin and Michigan while stretching as far south as Tennessee and all the way east to the Atlantic coast.  Unbelievable!

Even here, in south-central Minnesota, we can’t get a break.  North of us gets snow; south of us gets snow; east and west of us gets snow.  But our location — flurries are reason for a party.  Even the snowglobes sold in stores have dried up.  We did have one week recently where it snowed three out of seven days.  Obviously, whomever is behind The Weather Conspiracy went on a brief vacation.  Someone forgot to pull the levers and flip the switches to make the snow miss where we’re at. 

I am now absolutely convinced there’s a plan in place to keep us from snow.  I don’t know who’s behind it and I don’t know how they’re doing it, but I do have an idea.  Something is very, very wrong here.  Even at this very moment, The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore, someone I used to believe was my weather friend and mentor, is taunting me, sauntering around Boston sticking a measuring tape into knee-deep snow.  In fact, if I didn’t know better, I think I just heard him say “eight to 12 inches of snow here… too bad you’re not here Christopher…”  Jerk.