EYES WESTWARD

For the past few hours, I've been keeping an eye to the west. West is the direction from which our weather typically arrives. My interest was piqued because the National Weather Service has been nattering on about a major storm for hours, and had a "winter weather advisory" in effect hereabouts until 4:00 p.m. "Rain, freezing rain, sleet, ice accumulation, snow." A 100% chance.

It's now 5:39 p.m. and…nothing. Zip. Nada. Diddly-squat. Nary a drip, pellet, or flake has fallen. Not even a chilly mist. Which is not a complaint, mind you. But such a lack thereof did rouse my curiosity, so I checked out their various radar maps. 

Maybe a half-dozen miles to our north there's a decidedly ugly mass of nasty weather stretching from Indianapolis, Indiana to the west to Mansfield, Ohio in the east, and north nearly to Lake Erie. We're just below this storm-band's southern edge.

To the south of us, perhaps a dozen miles, there's an even bigger, even uglier mass of stormy weather spanning from west of Louisville, Kentucky practically to the Ohio River on the east—about to cross over that eastern border to enter West Virginia and Pennsylvania. 

Our amnesty—whether by a favorable whim of the weather gods or some simple high-pressure anomaly—is because we're in this perfectly clear slot—a storm-free lane within that huge mass of hazardous weather the NWS has been warning everyone about. But not, alas, for too much longer, since a glance at the pertinent, wider-spanning mosaic sector radar shows plenty of storm yet to come. Sooner or later, I fear our reprieve will end.

Now, though, we're in the V.I.P. seat!