THE weather gods predicted much at the weekend but delivered little; in fact the 'most significant snow event in 15 years' turned out to be little more than a heavy frost in much of our region.
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Snow was truly an elusive quantity apart from some isolated pockets around Sunny Corner and Oberon and even they were nothing special.
But there's a bright side and, to plunder an old song, with no business like (no) snow business Lithgow and other Tableland centres west to Orange were flooded with visitors all in a vain search for that picture postcard Winter experience.
In Lithgow it was even busier than the usual holiday weekend and our food and accommodation outlets were loving it.
And the supermarkets did well in the lead up to the weekend with shoppers stocking up on food in anticipation of a paralysing dump such as the freak blizzards of 1964 and '70.
On the highways around the region there was totally un-seasonal gridlock at times.
But even without the snow there was no escaping the most bitter weekend of the Winter with howling winds off the 'real' snow in the south west playing havoc with temperatures that struggled to get above an icy five degrees.
Autumn begins next week but don't pack away your thermals just yet.
Snow rush was tourism gold
THE much hyped warnings of a significant late Winter snowfall had visitors flocking to the region as far west as Orange.
Most went home disappointed while some made the most of the patchy snow that was around.
But the snow rush was gold for the tourist trade with heavy demand for accommodation in Lithgow as elsewhere.
Now the column's reliable Orange correspondent tells us the emerging popularity of their city as a getaway destination for city slickers is getting people worried, anxious the influx is increasing the risk from that virus thingy.
"Close the borders east of Bathurst", is apparently the rallying call .
Strange times
FINALLY with the snow rush and late afternoon Sunday traffic heading through Lithgow towards the Bells Line was banked up the full length of Mort Street from the Bridge Street traffic lights and for much of western Main Street from the Lithgow Street lights.
That's a spectacle usually reserved for the busier holiday weekends.
The last tango
YOU really have to feel for those graduating school kids this year unable to celebrate their great escape with the traditional school formal.
Some have spent up to 13 years in a classroom looking forward every day to that final night of bacchanalia.
Probably, though, there's a lot of relieved parents (they won't admit it) and finally a level playing field for those families where the cost of the requisite formal attire is just too much of a demand on the household budget.
Maybe next year they can have a retro formal.