Winter in Southern Idaho Appears to Be Over in One Day

I’m not sure we’re going to have much of a winter in southern Idaho (famous last words?) When I saw some snow pop up later in the day Thursday (it hadn’t been in most forecasts I saw Thursday morning), I expected I would be scraping for 15 minutes before driving to work. As it turned out, it was a quick job and then the drive was uneventful and the streets were mostly clear. Do we give credit to the city for putting brine on the main streets?

Credit Bill Colley.

By late morning, there was just a bit of snow still on the windshield of our engineering truck at work. The sun came out, the temperature climbed, and all we got was soggy ground, which won’t stay that way for long. Some rain is predicted for Saturday, and then another dry spell is in the long-range outlook.

December of 2016 started like this. One Saturday that year I drove to Jerome with windows down. By Christmas, the streets were clogged with snow. Then it got very cold, and January was practically Arctic with below-zero temperatures and heavy snow. It concluded with massive flooding in February and March.

A couple of years later, we had a dry winter, and then some 14 feet of snow fell on Blaine County. It was so cold there that even the Democrats had their hands in their own pockets!

I write this with some conceit. Friends in the mountains have been buried in snow for weeks, and we need it for spring planting in the valleys. I’m glad they can help while I’m dry.