I guess Ol’ Dutch has been around long enough to have heard everything there is to hear. So, nothing really surprises me. It seems like the last few years, though, the weather forecasters have really intensified their reports to include exaggerated wording. 

With the start of The Weather Channel, there was an influx of built-up drama to any weather event, and they came up with names for weather happenings that we all just took for granted. Looking back on my early life, people were pretty much just satisfied with saying “it’s gonna rain” for a normal type event and if you needed to embellish it you could maybe say “it's gonna rain a bunch.” 

And I guess the old timers did have some unusual definitions of intensity of storms as I can recall people saying of a big rain that it was a “toad strangler” and my all-time favorite from a farmer friend of “raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock.” The first one a person is able to kind of visualize no matter your upbringing but unless you have been around cows you cannot know the truth of that second kind of flow. 

Back to The Weather Channel and their love of labeling every impending storm with apocalyptic terms. It happened again this past weekend.  Miss Trixie and Ol’ Dutch were subjected to “the storm of a lifetime” down in Texas which I think is my third one since I started spending winters down here 16 years ago. 

So, I got to thinking – a dangerous proposition according to Miss Trixie – that I may be living more lives than people are generally given since I have had three “once-in-a-lifetime events” just in the last five years. 

And yes, they have been a doozy of a storm each time, but I can't say they were any worse than storms that I endured during my entire lifetime. 

Several such storms come to mind when I think about this, but one in particular was pretty darned epic. 

It happened on an Easter weekend in Kansas, and I was on a train traveling across that wide state. We had a “blue norther" sweep in from Nebraska since the only thing holding it back was a few strands of rusty barbed wire. 

I was working on the railroad and riding along in those massive locomotives a person gets a certain feeling of invincibility, and that day was no different until it wasn't. Somewhere West of Utica, Kansas, we stopped in a snow drift taller than the train and there we sat.  

Suffice it to say we spent several days on that locomotive and when we finally got rescued two days later, I can recall looking back at the train and seeing the entire train covered up with snow. 

And true to their pattern, the weather men called it the storm of the century although I did see it happen again four years later. Go figure. 

Another time I was in South Fork, Colorado, and it snowed 44 inches and let me tell you, it was quite the experience trying to navigate that even in a 4x4 truck with new tires. Everything just came to a standstill. Including my dating of a cute little gal there at the time. 

But in “every cloud there is a silver lining” I guess and I never would have met Miss Trixie to which she says “Amen.” I am not sure whether that's a good “Amen” or a bad one but Ol’ Dutch will have to believe for the best in that as I don't have much else to bank on. 

This storm ended up not being what they had forecast, but that didn't prevent everyone from cleaning out the milk, eggs and bread from the local grocery stores. Which has got me to thinking – again, a dangerous thing – that maybe the food stores sponsor the weather forecasters and all their predictions. 

Because it seems like about the time grocery sales get a tad depressed we get another doozy of a forecast with "imminent disaster,” “extreme risk of bodily injury,” "expected loss of electricity for days,” and “food shortages to be expected” come rolling across the TV screen. 

Despite the grim warnings, we survived warm and fed.  

And I am thankful that I can now live free and easy, knowing it won’t happen for another century — or next week, whichever comes first. 

Kevin Kirkpatrick spends his days fishing, hunting, ATVing, hiking or making people laugh. His email is Kevin@TroutRepublic.com. Additional news can be found at www.troutrepublic.com or on Twitter at TroutRepublic.