Snowmageddon 2013
Martin_H
Posts: 4,051
People are panicking in New England over the approaching snow storm due to arrive tomorrow. Schools have been preemptively canceled, store shelves denuded of their contents as people stock up on staples. I am largely unconcerned, except that I will be spending the next 24 hours shoveling my driveway on and off.
But I figured I would post about my plight so the forum members in more clement locales could gloat.
But I figured I would post about my plight so the forum members in more clement locales could gloat.
Comments
John Abshier
I know your pain. But here's a tip: shovel snow off of your driveway. Shoveling snow back onto your driveway is very inefficient.
+71
-Phil
No gloat!
Stay safe, and watch out for the crazies. :zombie:
Hey thanks. Except for power outages, roof collapses, traffic accidents, and shoveling induced heart attacks, a blizzard is a fairly benign extreme weather event. I’ve been through a bunch of these (including the blizzard of ’78), so I’m fairly sanguine about life returning to normal in a day or so.
we are set for another sunny day, even though the forecast calls for rain -- it looks doubtful. I'll put the dog out later, if he comes back in with a wet back, I will presume it has rained (or that he fell into the pool).
http://www.wunderground.com/weather-forecast/95977
I also got several WEA (Weather alerts brought to me by the friendly gombt) text messages on my cell phone in the middle of last night, warning me of the immanent danger of even thinking about getting out of bed in the morning. Like I hadn't noticed the crowds of people panic buying in the past few days... Happily, I realized there is still an option to disable the WEA text messaging (that is, all but the 'Presidential Alerts').
It's snowing for criminy's sake, it's not like we are about to be hit by some crazy asteroid or something! (irony intended)
I'm done ranting now...
You might as well like like the Scandanavians, under-ground.
I prefer driving on snow. Looking forward to next winter every spring (seriously. Asphalt is extremely boring.)
It's been a while since there really was a lot of snow.. the climate started heating up nearly twenty years ago and steadily moved south, when it passed here there were a few years with extreme amounts of snow. Snow level on the ground was 240cm when spring came, back in 1997.. that was a lot. Some people had to use the upper floor balcony to get out of their homes. No worries. Since then the warming moved south, with the wave of snow following.. seems they have got the leftovers of that in the UK by now.
Anyway, however much snow there's been here I have never heard about a school closing for snow, ever. Although there have been a couple of cases where the children had to stay overnight at school because an avalanche had blocked the road home.
I have to say again that I really prefer snow for driving. It's just so much nicer.
-Tor
I don't mind driving in snow. But it's all the incredibly stupid people who are whizzing around me who drive like there's no snow at all, that's the nightmare.
Something Tor said resonated with me. A couple weeks ago I was outside quite late, burying a cat. (After 18 years, Fatima passed away.) A low dense cloud bank was overhead. The ground, trees, and houses were covered with yet another soft deep blanket of snow. With albedos near unity both above and beneath, what light there was was being reflected over and over. The end effect was a night brighter than any I'd ever seen before. I think we could have staged a softball game in the back yard without flipping a switch.
I had a white knuckle commute like that two Mondays ago on Rt 3. People driving at full speed with an inch of snow on the road. Completely insane. Eventually a truck rolled over and backed traffic up for an hour. I had the good fortune to be ahead of the pack so I didn't get bogged down, but it sounded pretty bad.
The big scare is the autumn when it starts to get dark and rainy and pedestrians are invisible. It's such a relief when the snow finally arrives and you can see again.
-Tor
Amanda
Boy, is that is a loaded question. I'll dodge the obvious argumentative reply. But, the truth is that there are are a LOT MORE people now in the damage path of these events. That and the fact that we have failed to manage redundancy in our infra-structure -- nearly to the point of generational negligence -- so that it is much more susceptable to multiple failures under these kinds of events. Lastly, our society is much more reliant now on constant flow of goods (urban dwellers are not agrarian by definition) and interruptions in multiple delivery systems effects literally millions of people. And if there were millions of people in Montana I dare say the legends told may be a different tale.
They all moved to Seattle.
Today's 'Taipei Times' seems to think a rather huge bilizzard is in the making for the East Coast. I put it all down to global wariming. Why so? Well, more heat in the system means more water goes into clouds and has to come down somewhere.
What to do? Stay home, stay warm. There is a good reason all those Russian authors wrote such long books, nothing else to do.
One thing that disappoints me about Seattle, though, is their acquiescing to the use of salt on the streets and highways. Nothing kills the life of a car quicker than salt. And for what? One less snow day away from work?
-Phil
Weather forecast for next two weeks is cold and clear sky.
I =see= snow almost every year... at the very top of Mt. Diablo and Mt. Tamalpais. And one year, a cold winter rainstorm managed to generate some snow at sea level... for about a minute! That was quite enough. :-|
Should I ever get the strange urge to actually touch some snow, I'll drive up to Mt. Shasta, throw a snowball, get back in the car and drive home!
@