If the winter of 2007-08 is “average,” then Western Maryland can expect to see 31 winter storm events, according to the Maryland State Highway Administration.

The agency reviewed statistics dating back to 2000 and found that 31 was the average number of storms in our region. The rest of the state gets off a lot easier, with the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland average 6 storms and the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. metropolitan area averaging 7.

The SHA has a virtual army when it comes to fighting the snow, ice and sleet. It can call out as many as 2,600 employees when a storm blankets the entire state.

Last fiscal year, the SHA spent $48.3 million and spread 252,840 tons of salt during snowstorms. The state’s fleet includes 550 truck-mounted saddle tanks, 80 wing plows, 11 truck-mounted liquid applicator spray tanks and eight salt brine machines....

While I have you in the mood for snow, it is a good time to make a pitch for Letters to Santa Claus. The Times-News will publish five Gift Guides this holiday season, and there is space for local children to write to Santa.

Letters can be mailed to “Letter For Santa,” c/o Cumberland Times-News Advertising Department, P.O. Box 1662, Cumberland, MD 21502-1662, or sent via email to advertising@times-news.com....

Have you been scammed? Thirty million people confessed they were in 2005, according to a survey by the Federal Trade Commission.

Of those, 5 million said they fell for fraudulent weight-loss products, and another 3 million were bilked by foreign lottery scams.

One big surprise in the survey: People between the ages of 35 and 44 were much more likely to have been cheated than senior citizens....

Deer found recently in the Mexico Farms area were too decomposed for the Maryland Wildlife and Heritage Service to determine what led to their demise.

Times-News Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers says it would be likely that epizootic hemmorhagic disease killed the animals, as it has in various places throughout the Mid-Atlantic states in August, September and October.

Now that cold weather has set in, the midges that bite the deer and infect them will no longer be a problem and the deaths should stop....

While we hear a lot about the many deaths in Iraq, the number of military deaths in 2006 was not as great as the fatalities at the beginning of the 1980s.

According to a Congressional Research Survey using sources of the Department of Defense, total active duty military deaths in 2006 was 1,858 and in 2005, 1,942.

The survey reported that the 1980 military death rate was 2,392 and in 1981 it was 2,380. The lowest number for the years 1980-2006 was 758 in 2000. Thanks to Don Shrader of Short Gap, W.Va., for telling me about the survey Website....

Andrew Duck, the Democrat who waged an unsuccessful campaign against Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md. 6th) two years ago, is boasting that he led Bartlett by a percentage point in a poll taken over the last weekend in October. The survey of 400 likely voters had Duck ahead 39 to 38 percent. Whitman Insight Strategies conducted the poll....

Maryland’s courts are reviewing their policy of banning cameras from criminal trials, according to the Daily Record newspaper.

Maryland is one of 15 states that does not allow cameras in criminal trials. Cameras are allowed in criminal appeals, but only with consent of all lawyers in the case.

If the courts do not agree to cameras on their own, Del. Michael Smigiel (R-Cecil County) said he will introduce legislation requiring courts to permit cameras. He filed the bill previously, but the measure was defeated....

Seen on the Internet — Excuses Used to Break Dates or Relationships:

• I’m sorry but my friend is a psychic and she thinks that you are the devil, and dating you would violate so many personal rules of mine.

• I would love to go out with you, but I need to ask my finance, and I don’t think he would like that very much.

• I can’t go out that night because my mom is cooking me a liver dinner.

• I cannot go out with you, because lately I feel like I can do a lot better.

• My plunger is stuck in the toilet and that’s why I can’t go out with you tonight.

• I want my first date to be with a special guy.

Jan Alderton is managing editor of the Cumberland Times-News. His email address is jpalderton@times-news.com.