I was a (very short-tenured) member of the Baylor debate team in a year when the national topic was "Resolved: that the federal government should control the supply and utilization of energy in the United States." In one cross-examination, after my opponent had quoted a meteorologist on the impracticality of drilling in Alaskan winters, I asked in smarmy tones, "Perhaps you could tell us what a meteorologist has to do with the weather?"

Silence. The array of facial expressions respectively displayed by my partner, the guy I was questioning, his teammate and the judge ranged from horror to "Are my ears working?" to confusion to a sort of happy realization that "I've just heard the stupidest question in history!"

Four-plus decades later, I still can't explain why, at that moment, I thought "meteorology" had something to do with meteors. I mean, I KNEW what meteorology was/is. When I was in high school, popular local Channel 8 weatherman Warren Culbertson used to come once a week into the ice cream shop where I worked to get a strawberry shake. We talked about WEATHER.

Fortunately, I never saw Warren Culbertson after the debate faux pas. I'd have been ashamed. I'd have to have +said, "Sir, you don't remember me. I used to make your strawberry shake at Polar Bear."

He was a very pleasant sort of local celebrity, so I suspect he'd act like of course he recalled those fine summer nights. "Certainly! Best shakes I ever had! How are you, young man?" he'd say.

"Well, not so great, Warren. Y'see ..." and then, like King Henry confessing to Thomas a Becket, I'd describe my misdeed. Then, he'd shake his head sadly — blaming himself, possibly — and wander off, never to eat strawberry ice cream again.

What all this means is that I should be the last person to heap abuse on meteorologists (although, come to think of it, I did so earlier this year over what seems to be a collective aversion to telling viewers what the freakin' humidity level was going to be on any given July or August day).

And now?

Well, I want to file a complaint with these otherwise excellent professionals over what I perceive as an inability to come up with a winter-weather synonym for "bitter" as applied to wind and/or cold. Let me help. For wind, say:

1. "Raw, filthy, spooky, skin-peeling wind"

2. "Wind the likes of which Ivan Denisovich never experienced on the worst day of his incarceration in the Soviet gulag."

3. "Your lungs will feel like you dry-rubbed them with Drano."

4. "Wind that will instantly freeze the contents of your nostrils"

And to describe "cold":

1. "It's so cold you'll beg for the ovens of hell."

2. "The temperature outside? Well, it's boreally unpleasant to an emphatic degree."

3. "Folks, if cold was a scent, today would be an open, septic pit!"

4. "It's so cold a bad college debater's brain would freeze while he's trying to remember the definition of meteorology."