I admit it. I’ve had my nose buried in outside writing projects the past week and haven’t been paying much attention to news beyond Sun City and the Huntley area. Maybe not even beyond Sun City. Perhaps I should count myself lucky I’ve been bundled up in a world of fiction; otherwise, my said nose might have caught a serious case of frostbite when the Siberian Express cold front swept through, which I missed entirely.
I only learned of it a few minutes ago, reviewing current headlines while the weather outside is a nice, brisk, snow-shoeing 16 degrees—not too shabby for February. The sun’s out, too.
I clicked through a few news sites when, all of a sudden, I was bombarded with headlines that read:
The coldest day ever! Temperature records broken across the country… (DailyMail.com)
Siberian express: Record cold attacks East, South (USA Today)
Another subhead read:
…East Coast ‘the coldest place in the world’ (The Christian Science Monitor)
Another site claimed:
‘…seven dead.’
“Broken.” “Attacks.” “Coldest.” “Dead.”
What?! Really?! I was chilled.
When I think of the Siberian Express, I see a menacing train engine pushing through the Eurasian Steppe, snarling, huffing steam like a ghoul (I know, the real one looks more like a ride through The Sound of Music) with a giant cattle scraper on the front that may or may not be used for cattle, so when I hear of a cold front being compared to the Siberian Express, I expect something big, dark, blasting, and unforgiving.
However, the supporting images that popped up on my screen were pretty hum-drum, if you ask me: a few frozen rivers, cars glazed in frost, a window cracked, people wrapped in scarves. One particularly funny image claimed a geyser was frozen in ‘midair’ in New York…of all places. So far as I can tell it was a fountain not a geyser. Why, you ask? There are no geyser’s in New York (unless you count Big Geyser, the nationwide bottling company—but early reports say the company is doing just fine).
I thought back over the past few days, reviewing my perception of the weather. Sure, I packed my dog into her wool sweater (mostly because it’s darn cute on her) and punched up the thermostat one degree, but for the most part, it was business as usual. My cars started fine, my home’s soffits didn’t buckle, my driveway didn’t crack. My house didn’t shatter, and my limbs and fingers and toes (and nose) remained intact. I didn’t even complain about the cold, which I’m growing more and more apt to do in recent years.
So how, if the Siberian Express cold front was the coldest weather front in US history, did I miss such an event? How did I not witness an invisible field of air creeping and crunching its way over the Midwest? I went out of my house during these days (in fact, the photos with my byline featured in this edition were all shot while the Siberian Express was pounding through), after all, and sensed nothing out of the ordinary—just another red-cheeked, bitter Chicago winter, if you ask me. If anything, I was thanking my lucky stars it wasn’t like last winter’s unrelenting arctic temperatures. It made me wonder about whomever was bemoaning this cold spell. Did they not live through last winter? I’m still terrorized by it. I still wake up every morning, look outside, and think, “I can’t believe IT’s (the cold’s) here again.”
Knowing I was going to base this week’s Happy Trails on the Siberian Express, I sat thinking about my oversight while staring at a blank page—a cold and ominous visage, if there ever was one (the coldest, perhaps). All that space, very little words to get the fire going.
Before long, I started shaking my head, deciding that (in my opinion) national news organizations, by and large, are the biggest group of dramatizers on the planet. Have none of them lived through a North-American winter? I guess bold claims is what happens when you spend enough time speaking in headlines.
Tell a major news organization that your car had a flat tire while driving home from work yesterday, and tomorrow you’ll read:
Tire explodes during afternoon commute
Driver shaken, unharmed
Phew, close call. Brush of hand across forehead.
My experience in newspapers (and sometimes falling culprit to writing drastic headlines) has numbed me mostly to news drama, but I still am victim to their appeal (who doesn’t like a good story?), so I’m glad I missed my ride on the Siberian Express. Otherwise, I might have made more out of just another cold day.
