Warmth brings to mind record low back in 1983
The record warm temperatures we’ve experienced this Christmas season have been a blessing to travelers but a disappointment to traditionalists.
“It just doesn’t seem like Christmas,” we heard so many times last week.
Some of our readers may recall the opposite kind of weather 32 years ago. Staff writer Dan Duke reported in a front-page article in this newspaper on Dec. 27, 1983: “Santa Claus brought a vicious Old Man Winter into town for the holiday weekend, and fire departments, the water company and the power company are still repairing the results.”
The temperature on Dec. 26, 1983, dipped to 16 degrees below zero in Washington and Waynesburg – an all-time record. Even lower temperatures were reported in other areas of Washington County.
The colder the power lines got, the more brittle and easier to break they became, and combined with high winds, more than 50 power outages occurred in the area. Water-line breaks were so numerous that the water company had not found time to count them, the newspaper reported.
The weather was so cold that even Christmas Eve candlelight services at First Presbyterian and First Methodist churches in Washington were canceled.
The lack of a nostalgic covering of fresh snow may be disappointing, but better to count our blessings.