"Everyone talks about the weather. Nobody does a damned thing about it." - Unknown
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OK, this is my last rant about the weather.
The above sentence will likely be proven a lie, and, I suspect, in the very near future.
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Almost one year ago exactly in this space, I wrote somewhat smugly about our area repeatedly missing, narrowly, winter storms that hammered our neighbors to the south. Folks in the Mid-Atlantic just got pounded; here, 150 miles north of NYC, we had a lighter-than-normal winter (call it 40-45 inches or so).
Mother Nature must have had a free moment in Her schedule and had taken Notice, because this winter, She-who-must-not-be-messed-with has remembered us.
This is not a "Dewey defeats Truman" headline; I voluntarily live in the Northeast, and have my entire life. Snow between late November and late March is to be expected, and four to five feet of it are a common-enough total for a winter here to not pass much notice.
Sixty-plus inches, however, in thirty days, is a real pain in the ass. I just watched the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore, who's pretty knowledgeable, call this the worst winter he remembers in tweny-five years.
This, from a guy who makes his living staring down hurricanes.
Meteorologists in our area, for the first time in my memory, are routinely calling for 100% chances of snow. No hedging of bets whatsoever. Why bother?
It's not that we get snow, and that I can't stand it. We do, and I can.
It's not that I want to live somewhere warm. I would not trade this area for anything, even with the winters.
It's the relentlessness of it this year. If I count right, we've had seven major storms since Christmas, and our area has gotten drilled by six of them. The one we missed? Only got about four inches.
It's also not a tale of woe. We have family in Buffalo and New Hampshire for whom this is pretty routine. I love them dearly, but that's their problem, and I want to whine about mine.
All right. I'm done.
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True story. This morning, 8:30 or so. Back in AP after having successfully gotten the boys to school, and Bride to work. It's snowing sideways, and I'm in our local market picking up a few things. I run into a good friend who also has kids in our schools. We chat, 5-10 minutes, than go finish our purchases. I find myself behind him in the checkout line when his cell phone goes off at roughly 9:10 AM, to alert him that the children we have just deposited at school, and who started their school day seventy minutes earlier, will be released at 11:00.
I could not fault the decision for a single moment. In addition, there is not a single chance in hell of school tomorrow; Thursday may also be in question. It's a little before three in the afternoon as I write this, and the eight inches we got this morning were little more than a warmup for the main event expected for this evening. We have a brief breather; our plow guy's been through, and I expect to see him again, and again.
Our school district plans for five snow days each year, a total sufficient 99% of the time. We used that up in January.
We have another eighteen inches-plus expected, starting tonight. (Update 2/2 10:15am: We only got about ten. Meh.)
True story #2: A good friend, who lives just south of the Canadian border, suggests we move North to avoid the snow, as they've gotten a pittance, in comparison. Yep, that Global Warming stuff is just some cockamamie Left-wing creation.
The point of all of this? Mother Nature is not to be trifled with. Stay warm; after all, it's only February first.
Excelsior!
