Negative 3 degrees! Seriously? In Arkansas? I left my ice fishing gear in Wisconsin.
As that great sage Randy Travis observed, “Old men will talk about the weather” (Forever and Ever Amen) and so I will. You have got to be kidding, I come to Arkansas to escape the frozen tundra of Wisconsin and what do I get? Yep negative 3 degrees and eight inches of snow! That’s what we were gifted this week in Rogers, Arkansas. I’m snowed in!
Now I realize the Ozarks can be a bit strange. After all, I did watch Ozark. In fact, every time I mention where I have a home to my Greek and Australian cousins they ask, “Is it really like that?” My doctor up North swears there is no home without an AK (he might be right on that one). And if you ever spent a day on the Lake, roped to a dozen other pontoon boats, well…you get the idea.
But, seriously, SNOW? Arctic temperatures? Those are not to happen here.
Thankfully I have winter coats. My neighbors, well, they are stuck fighting off the cold and shoveling the snow with a sweater and a broom.
As for my poor birds, the nuthatches and such, well for them it’s a time to puff-up those feathers and never leave my bird feeder.Winter Birds
Roughly 36 hours after the snow ended the city did get to my street. So there is that. If you were in Chicago or Milwaukee that would lead to citizens with pitchforks and torches outside City Hall. Doubt me? Ask Mayor Mike Bilandic who missed on one storm in Chicago and was summarily evicted from the City Hall. https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/february-2011/snowpocalypse-then-how-the-blizzard-of-1979-cost-the-election-for-michael-bilandic/ We take our snow removal seriously up North.
I have come to realize that when it gets below 45 degrees I have Beaver Lake and its 500 miles of shoreline all to myself. So, just as the snow began to fall, properly clothed in my Winter’s best, I was out on the Lake, and here’s what I got just a few days ago. Yep, a 19” Largemouth, and for that I’d brave any snowstorm, because, when if you don’t fish in those conditions, well, you don’t fish much in Wisconsin.Big Bass in Winter
I remember last year I went to the Home Depot after it got rather cold to pick-up a small heater so I could work in the garage. Alas, every heater—EVERY ELECTRIC HEATER—was sold out. I should have known then that a real snow would be no less than an apocalypse. Not to make a point of it, but up North we have like real furnaces and 18” of insulation, along with heated blankets, snow blowers and, I know this seems strange, actual plows.
The good thing, unlike up North, next week it will probably be 70 degrees and the great snowstorm of 2025 will be a mere memory. Happy sledding kids!
Retired Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge. President Trump’s attorney in 2020. Speaker, columnist, talk radio guest, father, grandfather and fisherman.
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