Area residents let their feelings about the weather be known

So this latest snow "event," as the TV weather people like to call it ...

Did you love it, the beauty and breadth of it? Did you catch yourself humming the first bars of "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas"? Did you go out and play in it?

Or did you hate it? Did you think it not beautiful at all, and winter only evil in its persistence and reach? Did you snarl at a child who dared sing of Christmas or Frosty the Snowman?

We heard from all of you.

"I like it," Celia Rosencrans wrote in response to our Facebook query Monday. She said she planned to "cuddle with a book in a comfy chair with a cup of tea," and let winter be winter.

"Although," she added, "I am anxious to get outside and work on a garden. All seasons are beautiful to me."

So, too, said Karen Solem Duray, though she also showed some impatience.

"I live in North Dakota because I like all four seasons," Duray wrote, "but sometimes winter runs into fall and spring and then winter is too long."

Brian Hazle agreed, vigorously, saying that anyone who says all this snow is "nice" should be hit "in the face ... with a frozen snowball ... at 100 mph ... with a rock in the center of it. The season of death should not last this long."

Richard Hill was less violent in his appeal: "Time for Spring." Anna Pascual offered, "I'm way past done with this snow!!!" Virginia Stewart wrote that she has read and re-read a quote on her daily calendar -- "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant" -- while Nancy Laughery said she's "planning a move the hell out of here!!"

Ray Nelson sent along a photo of a wooden "snow-woman" waving from his yard near Fertile, Minn. Only her head and an arm are visible in the high drift, and she is saying, according to Nelson, "Enough already!"

Welcome home

But Daniel Sondreal, who left Grand Forks in 2007, checked in while visiting from Kansas and sounded a wistful note. "The snow ... has made me feel at home," he wrote. "It is gorgeous and calming.

"I live in Lawrence, Kansas, and you never quite know what kind of weather you will get from day to day. Thus, when bad weather does come, everything basically shuts down. In Grand Forks, I've never found it to be that way, as the people know how to handle the weather."

Sondreal wrote that he went to a fitness club Monday morning with his mother and girlfriend and was delighted to see many other people there. "This wouldn't be the case in a lot of other places," he wrote.

"Now I don't live in the area anymore, but when bad weather comes away down south and most of the population is weary of the cold and the snow, I often state, 'Oh, this is nothing. I am from North Dakota.' "

A fellow who chose not to give his name -- but whose phone number suggests a southern Minnesota transplant -- stormed against the wintry weather with invective normally reserved for a hated politician.

"This snow is horrendous and unbearable," he wrote in an email. "(I am) so completely out of my mind sick of this crap weather.

"I hate snow to begin with and this is just dumb. Anyone who 'likes' this weather deserves to be stripped naked, dragged outside and beaten with large ice spikes and frozen snowballs, then left to 'enjoy' their beloved weather. Pure seething hatred for all that is wet, frozen winter (expletive)."

He went on, but that's about all we can share.

A real Winter

It was, once again, the sort of storm that could trigger the towing of cars, the flaring of tempers, the stopping of hearts -- and memories, fond or otherwise, of storms past.

Some may recall the Halloween blizzard that struck much of the region in 1991 -- and the sugar high of having to do something with all that undistributed candy.

Many take comfort in the calendar, in knowing that Easter is coming, and baseball, and picnics or spring planting.

Some take pride in living where snow can be measured not in inches but in feet. Others fret that it can be measured in flood outlook.

Tony Northrup offered the observation that these road-clogging storms "wouldn't be TOO bad if one lived in town, but when you live 45 minutes outside of town ... it's WORSE!!"

Also, "with the money this state has, there is NO reason why there shouldn't be MORE snow plows! One has to wait one to three days before they can go anywhere because there's like five plows for 10 counties or more. Take some of that 'oil craze' money and have more snow plows!!"

But Melanie K. Boe urges acceptance. "It's why we live up here ... the seasons. It's been so long since we've had a real Winter," one worthy, apparently, of capitalization.

Christa Soucie writes that her family "moved here from Texas about six months ago," and yes, she admits, that was "just in time for winter" and probably not the smartest timing.

"I'm pretty tired of this cold and snow," she wrote. "This snow doesn't melt. I was born and raised in Nebraska so you'd think I'd be used to it, but snow there melts, then you get more.

"I'm more than ready to take my kids to the park and play!! Can't wait for it to warm up!!!"

Better us than him

Sarah Marie Schauer lamented the lamenters. "Personally I'm sick and tired of hearing everybody complain about the snow," she wrote. "It's either complain about the snow or complain about how dry it is and how people don't have enough water for the crops to grow.

"This is North Dakota. We have dry years and wet years. Deal with it."

Arbury Johnson apparently dealt with it by moving west.

"I love that you're having it and not us," he wrote. "I'm a Washington resident now. Snow, heat and mosquitoes were too much for me."

Amy Huderle chimed in: "I'm bitter, very bitter," she wrote. "I can't make it to a concert in Winnipeg."

But we'll give the last word, for now, to Rus Schultz.

"I love the snow!" he wrote. "Best March ever!"

Call Haga at (701) 780-1102; (800) 477-6572, ext. 1102; or send email to chaga@gfherald.com .