Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Cantore was on the streets of Grantsville last filming a segment for his new series, Cantore Stories.

According to Cantore, the winter pattern of snowstorm after snowstorm in the eastern half of the country was unusual enough that the experts in winter weather tried to find the reason for snow on the ground, in some places, from mid-December until early March.

They were having no luck finding a catalyst for the weather pattern until it was brought to their attention that the storms ceased and the weather warmed immediately after Grantsville, W.Va., took down the snowflakes that they light up each December to brighten the Christmas season.

Meteorologists checked the data from the weather station that was placed at Pleasant Hill a few years ago by the Dept. of Homeland Security and found that Calhoun was the epicenter of the weather disturbances.

“This past winter was the worst on record. There were times when 49 of 50 states recorded snowfall on the same day! The storms followed one after another, with no let-up to melt the accumulated snow until the first week in March.

“We began looking for a reason why the snowstorms ended as abruptly as they did. And after checking all available data, the one thing that stood out was Grantsville removing their snowflakes from the poles in town the first week in March,” said Cantore.

He went on to say, “Although we have yet to discover why simple lights affixed to poles affected the nation’s weather as much as it did, we hope to study the phenomenon by setting up a monitoring station in Grantsville to keep track of weather changes in the immediate area through the end of next winter.

We are even seriously considering asking the town council to put up lights depicting raindrops if we run into a drought situation this summer. Who knows, it can’t hurt.”

Many of the area’s senior citizens were speaking with the Weather Channel crew, and as a group remembered that there used to be bad winters around here. The only reason for those bad winters they could think of, in light of the snowflake findings, was that there was an eccentric old lady who lived on Main Street who refused to take her Christmas lights and decorations down until the beginning of March. That is about the time that the snow would melt and winter would be over.

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