It occurs to me that a few aerial photographs of the city would give a very quick estimate of what percentage of homes in Baltimore are occupied. The vacant houses have perfectly smooth snow on their roofs (a small part of me wants to spell that "rooves"), and the occupied ones have a wavy/ripply texture to their snow.
(Then again, the info is probably already in a database somewhere compiled by more usual means. This'd still be a fun way to get an interesting visual representation of the situation though. If I had accesss to an aircraft. *shrug*)
(no subject)
i read 'ripply' as 'nipply' and for a second there, i was seriously confused.