Can you feel it? Can
you hear it?
There's a tingling, a buzzing, an electric current running
through the air.
It's winter, and the weather professionals are predicting
snow today. For some here in the
Northeast, it will simply add to the foot already received. Where I live, we have been graced with some
sleet and black ice but little else. This
means only one thing: Crazy people at the grocery stores.
I lived through the Blizzard of '78. My family went without electricity for a week
(with a six-month-old infant in the house) during the Ice Storm of '86. I understand the importance of stocking up on
staples and water. To this day, if
there's a particularly nasty storm front moving in, I will stockpile water just
in case by filling pots, pans, and plastic containers right out of the tap.
But a twenty-hour event with predictions of three to six
inches of snow? People feel the need to
flock to the stores like sheep for this?
Really? Where are you people
from, anyway …. Florida?
Look, it snows here.
That's what happens in New England during the winter. The temperature drops, the clouds gather, and
then - boom - ice crystals come out of the sky and land on top of each other on
the ground. It's not rocket science;
it's just meteorology.
Here's where I pick on the weather reporters, yet
again. This is their routine: With the possible storm front five days out,
they start hyping it. "SNOW
COMING," they smile. Everything is
cheeky. We still have days to batten
down the hatches. With three days out,
they start denying the radar.
"Looks like it'll probably be going out to sea. Sunny all day, so never mind." Two days out, the forecasters bring in
technology, talking about storm tracks and computer models and spaghetti
routes. Suddenly this little non-storm
is busting at the seams, and it's all Armageddon. We are treated to hourly snow predictions,
and the radar becomes Nostradamus when just days ago the television stars were
ignoring what the layman could see right there on the green screen.
A day before the storm starts, the weather people start
apologizing. "Sorry, folks, but
snow IS coming." Wait … they're sorry?
They're sorry. Now that it's
winter in New England, they're apologizing for New England weather.
What the Hell.
Look, I don't expect everyone to be as crazy-ass-nut-house
as The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore, who's a native New Englander,by the
way. I don't expect forecasters to stand
outside in a blizzard ala Ben Franklin with a kite, screaming, "THUNDER
SNOW! THUNDER SNOW!" But for the love of Valium, might you please
calm yourselves when it's a minor event.
Three to six inches of snow over twenty hours is not staple-hoarding
weather. It's not even
stay-off-the-roads weather. It's just …
By the time tomorrow morning comes, I'll be out there with
my plastic shovel making a path to the vehicles. The plastic shovel that's just like the two
others I have in the basement just waiting for weather like this. The shovels I bought on sale at the grocery
store over the years when I've gone to stock up for an impending storm, like
all the other crazy-ass-nut-house people around here. Like I did yesterday when I made sure to buy
milk, water, bread, cheese, sandwich meat, and a few other necessities (toilet
paper) and some not-so-necessities (Cheez-Its).
Don't blame me; I had
to go to the store. The weather people
said "snow" and there's a tingling, a buzzing, an electric current
running through the air. That's the
excitement of an impending storm. Or
maybe it's just Jim Cantore searching for the elusive thunder snow.
Either way, it's damn fun.
