It’s February.  February is the month that gives us hope we have survived another winter.  It’s a short month.  Snow doesn’t last forever.  And by the end of it, men are playing baseball again.  We can almost smell March, which is sometimes a deceptive and cruel month.  But March gives us the legislature’s spring break and that’s always good.

We ease into February with St. Joseph and Hannibal looking for temperatures in the mid to upper 50s and even the 60s for the first two days.  Jefferson City looks for highs of about 60, plus or minus two or three.  Joplin could see mid 60s and Cape Girrdeau is about the same as Jefferson City.

Let’s hear it for the end of January! But then again…

One year ago today we began this irregular journal:

“We’re in. And we’re not going out until the vending machine in the basement runs out of Pop Tarts or our copious supplies of Girl Scout Thin Mints runs out. (Every year we buy a case of thin mints and store them under our desk, parceling them out as rewards to the staff for extraordinary work. There are three cases under there now. The oldest is dated 2003 and the cookies are still yummy. They keep well at regular room temperature. Freezing only dries them out and makes them stick together).”

It was snowing like crazy that day.  The guy with the pickup truck that had a scoop on the front shoveled our parking lot about eight times that day and our car still disappeared under the snow.  The 2003 Girl Scout Cookies did disappear.  We’re about halfway through the 2004 case. They’re still great.

There is a certain guilt about feeling good about the end of January and the mild start of February.  Just a few feet from the Missourinet news desks is the Brownfield Network, the nation’s largest farm broadcasting network.  The people those reporters serve need a huge snowfall.  And the urgency is growing as spring plowing and planting season gets close.  A lot of parts of Missouri, including some that were flooded for part of 2011 haven’t seen appreciable rain for months.  If it was any drier in some of those areas, trees would be praying for a dog to come along.

So we celebrate the passing of a pretty nice January as Januaries go — and we’re always glad when they do.  And we welcome the mild beginning and the promise February brings us of the first stirrings of baseball.   We have asked the man upstairs to bring some moisture to our farmers.  But please, we have told him, put it only on the farm fields that need it.

That part of the message probably didn’t get through.

But in February, we realize that snow doesn’t last forever.