Behind the Headlines

By Charles Slat
Most of Monroe County woke up to a white blanket of snow Sunday, but it was a rarer storm than one might imagine.
Best estimates are that the Monroe area got from 5 to 8 inches of snow. According to the National Weather Service, the probability of Monroe getting 5 inches or more of snow on any Dec. 16 is 2 percent. That’s based on a span of about 45 years.
This 2 percent storm came in a series of weird waves. For reasons we won’t get into, I was up at 12:30 a.m., 2 a.m. 3:15 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. watching it.
If you were out on the roads after closing down a bar in the Monroe area, you probably were driving in a mix of rain, sleet and snow, all rolled into one. That’s when the real ugly part of the storm seemed to hit. Then it turned back into snow. That’s why underneath that mantle left behind on Sunday was a hoary crust of ice. It really is a wonder there weren’t a lot of widespread power outages.
The stats on this one might make some record book, if only because the amount of snow on Dec. 16 is so rare. In fact, the closer the official snowfall moves toward 10 inches, the rarer the version of the storm you got. The NWS says the chances of a one-day snowfall dumping 10 inches on the Monroe area on the 16th of December is 0 percent.
And just think, the official start of winter is only five days away.
Happy shoveling.