Radio Free Montone: Snow Drought?

By John Montone, 1010 WINS

Will someone please explain to me what a snow drought is.

Don't bother.  I can Google it.

I know that we haven't had much snow this winter.  Cue up that Hallelujah chorus.  And because meteorologists haven't been able to talk about the "white stuff," we must be experiencing some sort of  freakish weather pattern.  If not, well it could just be that we are rolling sevens and every time it rains the mercury climbs a bit too high for the "wet stuff" to turn into the "white stuff."  By the way, New York City has had an above average rainfall this winter.  And if you want to Google it go ahead but I can tell you based on my still fairly competent long term memory, some years we don't get much snow until say February and then we get buried by the "white stuff."

Here's how I view the weather as a news story.  There are the BIG ones.  Superstorm Sandy.  And there are the legitimate ones.  Six inches of snow falling during morning drive, five inches of rain causing roads to become rivers, a tornado touching down and a prolonged heat wave wilting flora and fauna. Finally, there are the "weather wishes."  That is, a forecast that has not lived up to the expectations of those who have been predicting it for days in advance.

They "wish" the weather had turned out worse, but it didn't. I recall doing a LIVE shot from the Upper West Side during what was supposed to have been a blizzard. "I am now buried…up to my ankles," I reported.  Admittedly, I said that for a few yuks, but also because my credibility was on the line. That's also why in early January of this year I called what was supposed to be our first substantial snowfall, "The great dusting of '15."  That's what it was.  A dusting.

I was helped along by a couple of incredulous French Canadians driving from Montreal to Miami who couldn't understand why so little snow was worth talking about.  And it is why on Monday morning, a day after an ice storm paralyzed the area with 428-accidents on New Jersey roads alone, I said on 1010 WINS, "If the over/under on crashes today is 400, bet the under."  There was almost no ice on the roads.  Not even the "black ice," we were told to expect. The weather wish did not come true.

My credibility had been put to the test on the Thursday before Sandy blasted the Jersey Shore.  I visited, Sea Bright, the skinny strip of sand and rock that sits between ocean and river.  As I was talking to the locals about whether they would evacuate, a guy approached and reminded me that I had been asking the same question a year earlier, right before Hurricane Irene.

Although Irene dumped record rain on North Jersey, inundating towns that had rarely ever flooded, the shore suffered little damage.  So he claimed it was the media up to our old tricks, scaring folks for ratings.  I told him and everyone else that if they ever listened to me, they would know I would never do such a thing.  I'm not sure my words helped, but almost everyone left before Sandy reached shore.

A week later I returned to Sea Bright to report on, "The town that drowned."