Winter comes each year but not every year is of equal measure. This year’s measure has been very unequal. The inequality began on December 1st when the low for the day registered in the teens. The highest low in the next six days was 15°. December’s severity was quickly erased from memory by 12 single digit or below readings in January.

The first snow of 2025 was on January 3rd, just one inch. That inch was smothered with six more inches on January 5th. Another inch of snow was added on the 6th, followed by two inches on the 10th and another inch on the 11th.

January’s highs were low. The snow did not go away. There were only five days between January 2nd and January 25th in which the hottest temperature of the day topped 32°. The last vestiges of the white stuff did not disappear until the month ended with three consecutive days with highs in the low 50’s.

Winter disappeared following French Creek Freddie’s Groundhog Day prediction of an early spring with a high of 66° on February 3rd.

All thoughts of an early spring were washed away when more than three inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours on February 5 and 6.

It was polar vortex after polar vortex followed by Winter Storm Harlow and then Winter Storm Jett.

While this winter has been more severe than others in recent times, there have been worse, far worse. The winter of 1977 is one which comes to mind.

On January 27, 1977, natural gas service went out to residences and businesses on lower Main Street in Hurricane. The lines froze to a depth of three feet. Columbia Gas crews arrived on the scene to remedy the outage but the outage spread to upper Main Street to Clark’s Department Store (site adjacent to Putnam County Bank), to the Odd Fellows Hall (site of Sergio’s), and to The Hurricane Breeze (present day site of a lawyer’s office) on Saturday, January 29.

The gas company worked around the clock through the weekend and was finally able to restore service on Main Street by running temporary lines above ground. The gas company moved to Second Street on Monday to find a four-inch gas line frozen solid. More temporary lines were necessary.

On Tuesday, the source of the water was found on Second Street near the A-Z parking lot. Normal service did not return until the moisture level was reduced to allow gas meters to operate.

The outage resulted in the Breeze being printed late. All pages of the newspaper were created using linotypes powered by natural gas. Linotype machines produced single lines of type from molten lead.

Breeze pages are now computer generated. Electrical outages of today can do that which frozen gas lines of 1977 did.