I’ve spent the majority of my life living in the South – albeit in pretty drastically different parts of the area – so when you toss in a couple of years in central Missouri, I like to think I’ve seen a pretty good cross-section of our country’s weather. But, I’m here to tell you Mississippi weather brings the extremes with the best of them. 

Being from Mobile, Alabama, I’m used to the brutal heat and humidity of the deep South. And ya know what? It gets really hot in Missouri, too. But, having now lived in this area for a total of seven years, with two across the bridge in Tallulah, I can say I think it is consistently more humid here than back home. I’ve been given a number of explanations for this, but I’ve always assumed it has a lot to do with the standing water of the Delta.

Similarly, I’ve been given lots of different explanations for why the weather in Vicksburg can be drastically different from the weather in Louisiana, just from one side of the Mississippi River bridge to the other. It’s a phenomenon that has unnerved me more times than I can count. I don’t know if any of the reasons I’ve been given hold any water, but certainly the Mississippi’s water has something to do with it.

And then there are the storms like the one that passed through town yesterday. As we all know, it doesn’t take much wind and rain to bring trees down across our hilly terrain, and Tuesday’s winds even contributed to a house collapsing on First North Street. Luckily, no one was home at the time of the collapse, but it’s nonetheless a testament to the power of some of the storms we get.

And as we all know, we usually get at least one good snow a year. I don’t believe we’ve ever had a winter without one since I’ve been here. Now given, it’s nothing like those Missouri winters – or even the four winters of snow we got when  my family lived near Louisville, Kentucky. But, it makes life hard for a few days.

And that’s exactly what yesterday’s storm did – make life hard, if only for a few hours. As Spring makes its slow arrival, let’s continue to remember to be prepared when we know these storms are on the way. I saw a lot of our first responders out yesterday while I was trying to navigate the storm for photos, and the more prepared we are, the less danger we tend to put them in.

Here’s hoping everyone made it through yesterday’s weather unscathed.

Blake Bell is the general manager and executive editor of The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at blake.bell@vicksburgpost.com.