Of persimmons and such...or will there be snow?

School children and teachers wait not so patiently for the first snow day of the season. Freshmen living at Southeast Missouri State University can only imagine sliding down the fabled terraces in front of Academic Hall. Local supermarkets have shelves full of bread, neatly aligned gallons of milk, and ample supplies of shovels and ice melt.

And my favorite "Social Mediarologist Bob Clubbs" has yet to issue his first freakout. Bob Clubbs predicts the severity of an incoming storm by issuing Freakout Alerts that are measured in gallons of milk needed to wait out the storm. A four gallon alert is a major storm. Alas, no Freakouts this year.

Could the persimmons have been wrong? Where are the epic snow storms predicted by all of those spoons inside persimmon seeds?

In a week when SNOW is major news for those in the nation's Northeast, the Cape Girardeau area is still looking for its first real snow. We have had a couple of "dustings" and observant #teamsnow members might have actually seen the snow on grassy surfaces before it dissolved.

There are snowballs to be thrown, snow cream to be made, and snowmen to be crafted before winter slips away. Those things, after all, are the reward for blistering cold temperatures--and we have had enough bouts of those to have earned the right to some snow. Children who got sleds for Christmas have yet to experience the exhilaration of flying down a snow-covered surface.

Dream on, Cape Girardeau; but while you wait for the real stuff, enjoy this photo of the fake snow used during the 2014 filming of "Gone Girl." It's only January...