Our recent bout of winter weather reinforced certain truths about folks in the south that I have always held near and dear. They are:

The mere mention of approaching ice or snow means a mandatory trip to the grocery store, whether you need anything or not.

You’ll always buy more than you need, mainly so you’ll look more prepared than your friends, and

We are all frustrated meteorologists at heart, and the longer we’ve been on the planet, the more we think we know about winter weather. After all, we can remember “the big one” back in ’60. Or was it ’61? Who knows.

No sooner had the weather gurus, and there are many of them, predicted an approaching blizzard, online discussions spread like wildfire as to the severity of the storm, who would get the worst of it, and which computer model was the most accurate.

Some conversations got rather heated, with a “my meteorologist can beat up your meteorologist” mentality.

I know it was a serious storm, but all the hoopla made me long for the days when our weather information in this stretch of the Carolinas came from a soothing source; a man named Clyde McLean.

Clyde was a fixture on WBTV for thirty years, from the early 50’s to the early ’80s. He earned the nickname “Cloudy” one winter when he told viewers not to worry, an approaching winter storm would miss us entirely and we’d have partly cloudy skies the next day.

Clyde blew that one. Carolinians woke up the next morning with three fresh inches of the white stuff already on the ground.

He took it in stride though, and joked about “sweeping three inches of partly cloudy off his sidewalk that morning.” From that day forward, he was known to most as “Cloudy” McLean.

“Cloudy” was the voice of calm in the storm. And in the current world where each dark cloud is seen as something to fear, I can appreciate that.

He stood in front of a map of the United States with marker in hand. That was the technology of the day. With that pen, Cloudy drew high pressure systems, low pressure systems, and arrows indicating approaching moisture from the Gulf.

There was no Doppler radar. There were no 10-day projections. And most notably, there wasn’t an ounce of panic in Clyde’s voice. Like a loving father, he stood in your home each night as an invited guest and told you what to expect from the weather the next day.

His wit was dry. Once, after being introduced by host Ty Boyd as “Claude McLeen,” he responded with “Thank you, Ty Phoid.”

He and his wife Janice had no children, so Clyde often volunteered to work holidays for other WBTV staffers who wanted to be at home with their families. He was the same man on the air and off.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the technology that allows us to predict the weather more accurately is a wonderful thing. It saves lives in many cases.

But like any technology, we misuse it from time to time. TV weather today has begun to resemble a game of one upmanship that seemingly has no bounds. Reporters are often placed in the direct path of a storm just to show us how dangerous it is. Did we really not know that already?

I keep wondering what would happen if one TV station would take a chance and give us a Cloudy McLean again; just a gentle, loving man standing in front of a map of the United States with a black pen.

Would it start a trend?

Kent Bernhardt lives in Salisbury.