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I learned everything I need to know about winter weather while living in Rochester, New York. Just before making my decision to move up there I read a description that said something like "Although Rochester is one of America's northernmost cities, its weather is moderated by the town's close proximity to Lake Ontario.' I saw this as a hopeful sign that maybe Rochester was a little known northern utopia that enjoyed summers like San Francisco and winters like San Diego all because it was situated next to a giant lake. I asked a Rochester native about the accuracy of the description. He laughed knowingly and said, "Yea, it's moderated, moderated between 0 and 10 degrees."

People who live in towns like Rochester are gripped by a stoic desperation during the winter. They buy old beat up cars to drive during the winter and spray paint "SNOW CAR" on the side. Then they attach a revolving blue light to the roof and zip through intersections at 60 mph, a cigarette in hand and a can of Genesee Cream Ale in the other.

People believe the conventional wisdom that northerners are used to bad winter weather. They see thousands of people sitting outside in stadiums from Buffalo to Green Bay and they just assume that they must be a hardy breed. In reality all of those people are depressed and liquored up to the point of not realizing where they are. Northerners never get used to the weather, they become possessed by it. Northern folks worry about weather constantly. I worked with a guy named Ed who used to drive out in winter storms just so he could provide horrifically detailed accounts of the carnage he saw or caused on the roads. Ed generally wore a snow mobile suit over his street clothes. He'd come into the office all zipped up and shiny in his red white and blue snow suit, chomping on a pipe and going on and on about all of the mayhem he saw on the road. We used Ed's first-hand weather and road reports to determine when to leave for home, ignoring the awful truth that Ed was a chronic drunk. We were beguiled by the pipe and snow suit which gave Ed the look of a swashbuckling snow pirate, "Arrgh mat-ties, cars are flipping all over route 390".

People who owned really nice cars never drove them during the winter. The theory was that the salt which the city of Rochester used to melt ice would rust out every vehicle on the road. This gave rise to the ubiquitous salt car. Guys would drive their BMW or Mercedes during the summer but they would bring their salt car out at the first hint of snow. That is unless they were not in the financial position to own a salt car. This was the case of my car pool partner Tony Ali. Tony spoke with a thick African accent but he claimed to be from Cleveland, Ohio which he pronounced "Cleeev-laund". We became suspicious of Tony's credibility when he skipped his driving turn in early December. We confronted him and he said in his afro-British Cleveland accent, "Dis in not a snow car mon. I cannot drive it in the winter."

People who live up north understand that they will be cold, wet and in the dark for half the year. They don't try to put a pretty face on it. They just say with all seriousness, "I sure hope summer falls on a Sunday this year."

Learn more about this author, Eric D. Johnson.
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