Weather guessers always remind me of the puppy you try to train to go on the pad: when they hit it right you feel so proud for them.

Well, you have to give the weather folks credit this time because they did a pretty good job of predicting the Great Winter Storm of 2011, by which it will forever be known. This is because when we have a winter storm in Atlanta it is always the great winter storm of that year.

So far the weather guessers hit on a White Christmas and a winter storm, which makes it a banner season for those folks.
Most of the people who ventured out onto the roads and got stuck did so for two reasons: they figured the weather folks would be wrong and they probably really did not need to be out in the first place.

Weather guessers are, in some respects, always right. If they say it will rain, it will rain - somewhere. We should give them a little break because a guy who hits .350 in baseball is considered a great hitter and the weather folks generally do a little better than that.

As for venturing onto the roads, unless you were in public safety or in the health care industry working at a hospital there was no real reason to be out driving around.

Some people think a four-wheel drive vehicle is the answer, and while that might work on snow, slush or mud it will not work on ice. You drive a four-wheel drive vehicle on ice and all you get is four wheels spinning instead of two.

No doubt there were some Scrooge types who demanded their employees come in, and these people should be pelted with snowballs - preferably filled with rocks. Hopefully this was a very small group because the roads were indeed treacherous.
Our friends above the Mason-Dixon Line find it amusing when they see us face such weather conditions.

In truth, we know how to handle such events in a superior manner to our northern brethren. Most of us reasonably sit back and wait for it to go away, which it will do in three or four days. They can not take this position up north because the storms they get last three or four months, which is a good reason to not live in such a place to begin with.

I received a phone call from my friend who lives outside of Chicago, and he was much amused by the paralysis this little weather event caused us.

I let him giggle appropriately and then pointed out with much glee that he would still be shoveling snow when the Masters tees off and I'm wearing shorts.

And we should actually thank Mother Nature for her efforts to shut everything down, but the General Assembly is officially in session anyway.

Despite the icy road conditions most legislators and guvmint officials were apparently able to generate enough hot air in front of them to get safely to the swearing-in ceremony at the capitol.

Maybe if we speak sweetly to her, Mother Nature could get the General Assembly to melt away after three or four days.

Ric Latarski is a freelance writer who writes on a variety of topics and can be reached at Rlatarski@aol.com.