snow emergency!

Not really. People just tend to overreact here. I’m sure it’ll be the top story on the news tonight.

This is what it looked like when I got to work this morning:

this is all it takes ...

In my 20-mile commute (which usually takes 25 minutes but today took about 45 — thankfully I carpool with my husband and could use the HOV lane or it would have been much worse!), I passed almost a half-dozen multi-car accidents. The first one involved six cars. Most of them had more than one car facing the wrong way. None of them were simple fender-benders, there were a lot of very smashed cars.

Meanwhile, there’s barely a dusting of snow. Sure, the roads are slick, but as long as you don’t drive too fast and don’t slam on the breaks it’s fine.

We don’t live so far south that snow is a rarity. It snows every year, multiple times a year. Not always substantial, but it’s there.

But they don’t know how to handle it. People can’t drive. Snow-removal/street treatment sometimes starts well before the snow begins (all the salt blows away) or doesn’t arrive until roads are already a mess. Though, if there is a big storm predicted, they will line up along the highway and wait for it.

Schools often cancel the night before when there is snow in the forecast, and then it doesn’t snow at all. Today they were open, but if it keeps snowing (snow advisory is on until 8 p.m.), they will close early.

I went to college in western New York, where it wouldn’t be uncommon to get two feet of snow in a few hours. My sophomore year, my Geo Prizm got stuck in a few snowdrifts, yet I still managed to dig out and go along my way.

The last time we got two feet in Maryland, I didn’t leave the house for two days. Our cul-de-sac is not high on the priority list for snow removal!

We’re only supposed to get up to two inches today. I’m hoping I won’t have a horrible commute tonight!

4 thoughts on “snow emergency!

  1. We live in Texas. When it snows (and it does), the entire city shuts down. We have no coping skills here.

  2. Don’t you love regional quirks?! Life’d be boring if we all coped with everything beautifully. I guess. (Here it’s heat. Tassie doesn’t get hot often so everyone goes into shutdown if it warms up. I’m from a hot place so I don’t mind… although the longer I live here the more I don’t cope!)

  3. A friend of mine is originally from South Carolina, and she always talks about being “snowed in” with 1/2 inch, so I know what you’re talking about in Texas!

    Cecily, where I went to college, it snowed A LOT and was much colder … I cannot tolerate the extreme cold anymore. You definitely adjust once you’ve been someplace for a while.

    Do you not get snow? We ended up with about 3-4 inches today!

  4. No, it doesn’t really snow here. The mountains around the city get snow, but not in the city. Makes for cold, cold winds but not the annoyance.

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