Jan. 27--When did weather situations start getting named like chocolate assortments or craft-beer 12-packs?
"Wintry mix," it seems, is the latest addition to our lexicon for describing atmospheric conditions. It refers to the borderline snow-sleet-rain you get when temperatures are right around freezing.
But it sounds so much more festive than that.
It's not a hybrid precipitation mess that will make walking uncomfortable and driving treacherous. It's wintry mix! Won't you have some?
The phrase has appeared 80 times in the pages of the Tribune -- to cite just one news organization -- all but three of them since 2001 and almost half of them, 35, since 2013.
I've been hearing the term so much in recent years that it now seems almost ordinary, a cliche that weatherpersons cannot wait to trot out. It comes on the heels of such widely used terms as "El Nino," "heat index," "wind-chill factor" and "polar vortex."
Most of those terms, however, are precise and honest in what they describe. "Wintry mix" puts a lace dress on a chunk of wood and asks you to take it to dinner. It is what those in the word business call a euphemism, a nicer way to say something than the thing deserves.
But maybe the term's prominence also signifies a cultural shift. Is snow becoming so important in the lower 48 that we, like the Eskimos, need a fattening thesaurus entry worth of words to describe the powdery stuff? Think of it: snowpocalypse, snowmageddon, thundersnow, lake-effect snow, and, now, wintry mix.
Rather than prettification or changing weather patterns, though, I think the main reason people are using "wintry mix" so much is a desire to find any novel way to describe weather. Think about it: Day after day, your job is to talk about the same three variables -- temperature, precipitation, wind -- that change only by degrees, often literally so.
Being able to sling lingo, I am convinced, is the only thing keeping some weatherpersons sane. And when a poetic little phrase like "wintry mix" comes along, well, you'd have to have a cold, dead soul to shun it.
Marketers, of course, have caught on. The Food Network website lists a "wintry mix" of Rachael Ray recipes chosen, it seems, for compatibility with cold days. And Harpoon Brewing, out of New England, actually used to sell a Wintry Mix 12-pack beer assortment.
Including a chocolate stout and a Munich dark, it sounds like just the thing to sit at home and dip into when it's too slushy and sleety to consider going outside.
sajohnson@tribpub.com
Twitter @SteveKJohnson
