DOVER — Some notes and quotes between headlines and deadlines …
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As you’ll see on the Page 1 flag and page folios, today’s Delaware State News is a rare combined edition.
Here in the newspaper office, we anxiously watch the weather in times like this.
Late Thursday morning, as forecasters seemed to be reaching consensus on a major snow catastrophe for our area, we considered the options for best serving and reaching our readership this weekend.
We did so with a goal of delivering this edition to homes and stores Friday night into Saturday before the worst of the storm. However, we recognized in advance that road and safety conditions may have hindered or delayed delivery.
We came to the conclusion that our best bet was to start planning a Saturday-Sunday edition that would offer a full complement of news, opinion, sports, features, advertising and more.
Much of the usual Saturday feature content is within the pages of the People section today. So, we’re happy to share that we included the Jumble and Wonderword for those of you with the daily puzzle habit.
The deadlines were set much earlier than we normally would have.
Given that, do not expect much storm impact coverage today in the print edition.
But, turn to delawarestatenews.net this weekend for up-to-date storm information and photos.
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With a newspaper like ours (of, by and for the people in our community), we always appreciate the help of our loyal readers in gathering news and photos.
Feel free to send us some snow reports, concerns and photos — whether of a snow castle or an impassable roadway.
Email newsroom@newszap.com or post directly to our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/DelawareStateNews.
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As a word of caution, be careful what you read and share on social media about storms in the area.
Sometimes, you’ll see some fun, creative graphics — like the one with Godzilla emerging from the bay and frosting the Delmarva Peninsula.
But other times, you may see some stories and graphics that are either erroneous or ancient.
Dan Satterfield, WBOC’s chief meteorologist, posted his concern about phony graphics, especially days ahead of a possible storm, in a blog Monday.
“There is a real possibility of a major winter storm this weekend in the I-95 corridor and it may impact us on Delmarva significantly as well with high winds and perhaps some snow,” he wrote. “That said, it is just too far out right now to pin down accumulation amounts. The rain snow line will be right across the area, and experience shows that five days away from an event, the models usually do a rather poor job of predicting where that line will set up.
“In snow forecasting just a degree or two difference can mean 12 inches of snow vs. rain. This is why we do not post raw model data five days away from an event, because it is not likely to be close to correct.
“If you see a map showing snowfall totals, it almost certainly did not come from NOAA, or an AMS Certified meteorologist. There are even hoax maps floating around from storms in the past.”
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News Editor Karen White pulled together a very interesting collection of past snow storms for today’s edition. All of them bring back quite a few memories.
As this editor recalls, the 2003 Presidents Day weekend snow event was one of the wildest.
We learned about the collapse of the ClientLogic building in west Dover and the collapse of a wooden roof over two bays of the then 50-year-old cargo warehouse at Dover Air Force Base. There was two feet of snow atop the buildings.
The silver lining, though, was that Dover Air Force Base rebuilt in a big way — a $79.3 million, state-of-the-art aerial port warehouse.
At the time, the State News offices were on Webbs Lane and New Burton Road, and in our own newsroom that weekend, we were concerned about a ceiling that started to sag. Thankfully, the bowing steel beam handled the weight as intended and another newspaper made it out the door.