They say this has been the snowiest winter in decades. You can’t prove it by me.

Memories of the Blizzard of ’96 and the infamous President’s Weekend Storm of 2003 and other monstrous winter nor’easters that wrecked havoc throughout the diocese still linger in my mind.

The snow siege that began in December and caromed into high gear the first and second weeks of February brought back memories of those earlier storms. The only really good thing about them was the way “snow angels” appeared, often seemingly out of nowhere, to help people endangered by the weather.

These last few weeks have turned thanking such snow angels into a bit of a media trend. Newspapers throughout our diocese have asked folks to e-mail and call about the spontaneous help they’ve received.

Further to our south, The Herald Mail in Hagerstown, Md., has set up a Snow Angel site asking “Do you know a snow angel? If a neighbor or someone else helped you during or after the recent snowstorms, please share the story.”

The responses are numerous and heartening and can be checked out at www.herald-mail.com if you click on the shoutbox on the home page.

This got me to thinking about the snow angels who’ve turned up in my life over the years. This is kind of a delayed shout-out to thank them.

In the 1996 blizzard, for instance, when my mother was nearing the end of her long battle with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), the furnace went out in our house. She had no resistance to cold by then and we knew her very existence was threatened.

Who would have thought anyone would wade through the heaps of snow and soggy water that surrounded our house to help us out that bitter, bitter day. But just when despair really started to set in, the repair man arrived and saved the day.

Dad, of course, had explained mom’s condition to the lady who answered the phone when he called the 24-hour number in the Yellow Pages.

She must have taken it upon herself to get the message across to her husband and he did respond, cruising his huge truck through the water to the destination.

Dad called it a miracle. We agreed.

Since then, I’ve noticed that snow angels appear when you least expect them. Sometimes there’s a slight fee but more often than not – whether it be kids or adults out to do a good turn – they only want to help for the sake of helping.

In these rather jaded times, that’s quite a testament to human nature.

I think of the enterprising truck load of handymen from the Lakewood area who swept in during the late December storm eager to provide really, really low cost snow removal in exchange for the opportunity to hand out a business card. They might have no idea of the relief they provided to elderly neighbors fearful that emergency vehicles couldn’t get to them if needed.

Then there were the neighborhood teens that knocked on the door during the first of the two February storms.

They were out looking for people to help on a snow swept afternoon. It was a lot better than just sitting around inside playing X-Box, they said.

As the second of the two February blizzards cascaded to an inglorious conclusion last week, an angel named Tom driving an old truck with a snow plow hit the street in our neighborhood. There, impenetrable mounds of snow turned the landscape into a scene out of Dr. Zhivago despite the best efforts of the maintenance crew.

Tom had come to help his mother-in-law Bella, who was under the weather. But he expanded his efforts to free our car and others.

“You’ve got to help people in a situation like this,” said Tom, who brushed aside the fact that his mission of mercy damaged his truck enough to leave a trail of red transmission fluid all over the snow.

“It’s nothing, really,” he said.

“Nothing I can’t fix.”

Shortly after that, he went home, got another truck and actually returned to finish the job.

Thanking folks like Tom, the teens, the handymen and the heating guy is the least I can do.

If you’ve got any snow angels to thank, I’d be happy to include them in the next column.

Lois Rogers can be reached at [email protected]