Whoever thought that snow -- the lack of it -- would make headlines in Erie, Pa. in January? Actually, about an inch of the white stuff finally fell today, bringing our winter total to just over 20 inches. But up til now, everyone has been talking about what a mild winter it's been. Warm temperatures throughout the month of December put golfers on the courses and hikers on Presque Isle's beaches.

Erie folks seem to love to worry, though, and now the buzz is that the pleasant weather is the latest manifestation of global warming. Perhaps, but we might also just be the lucky beneficiaries of an unseasonably mild winter. No matter, the plowman has yet to clear out our driveway at home -- always a good thing.

I'm reminded of my first year as a news reporter on the staff of the old Erie Morning News -- during the winter of 1977-78. It had to rank among Erie's worst winters. Not only did we get a ton of snow that winter -- nearly 143 inches -- it was also brutally cold and windy.

As the police reporter, I was charged with coming up with a new weather story every day. Most days it was easy -- and the stories were well read because hearty Erieites love checking out the statistics on an especially nasty winter.

One afternoon, a worker whose office was located in the old Commerce Building at 12th and State Streets called to say that the winds were so gusty they had loosened the bricks on the building's exterior. When I accused him of exaggerating, he insisted that I come over and see for myself. The building was a short walk down the street from the Erie Times-News offices, so I bundled up and headed over.

Turned out the guy was right: his bricks were loose alright. And another gust of wind came up while I was there, knocking the bricks right out of the side of the building, sending them to the ground 6 stories below. It turned out to be a great story for me.

Incidentally, when the Commerce Building, which was built in 1907, was razed several years later, it took many months to knock the old skyscraper down. I thought, if only we could get a high wind, like the one I witnessed in 1978.

The most attention I ever attracted for a winter weather story was the night the editor sent me out to follow the city snowplows -- to see if the drivers were working as hard as they should. The plowmen caught sight of the little red Times-News car trailing them and led me up to the end of upper State Street. Then they quickly plowed me in and left me there.

It took the newspaper's maintenance men more than an hour to come up and find me, then another hour to dig me out. When I returned, the editor sent me out again -- this time to check on road conditions. By now, the snowstorm was so heavy that I piled into a snowbank near the driiveway leading out of the Times-News parking lot.

That was my story for the next day's paper: an account of getting buried by the city snowplow, and then piling into a snowbank at the newspaper. Readers loved it. For years afterward, people would come up and ask, "Aren't you the guy who was stranded in the snow by the city plow?" We'd all have a good laugh.

I know global warming is a terrible thing, but if we continue to escape rotten winter weather, I don't think I'll complain about it until April.

-- Kevin Cuneo