![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Whoops. It's snowing. Softly, slowly. But being the first real snow (i.e. not just a flurry) of the season, it doesn't have to be at all impressive to make the roads tricky. The television folks just predicted an inch, which ought not be a challenge once people remember what snow is. (Well, as much as they ever do remember how to drive in it here, anyhow.[*]) My problem? I've got plenty of milk, toilet paper, and eggs, but I'm down to my last two slices of bread. And regardless of not wanting to take a shower in a cold house just to go deal with slippery roads and scared drivers, I don't want to go near a grocery store during the season's first snowfall ... not in Maryland, where the word triggers a Pavlovian response of "buy milk and toilet paper right now", at any point in the season. I'll wait until tomorrow, when (I think) it'll all be on the ground -- the phenomenon seems to be limited to when snow is either falling or predicted, not when it's sitting there.
But hey, it's pretty.
[*] Contrary to stereotypes envisioned by people in other places, it's not that nobody in Balto-Wash can drive in snow; it's just that enough people here can't -- and some just can't drive worth a damn in any weather -- that their presence on the road makes things that much more challenging for the significant number of people who can drive in snow. That, and the fact that we get truly clobbered by snow so seldom that it's not cost effective for local governments to keep the really serious snow removal equipment on hand. So every few years, when we do get hit with the kind of snowfall that someplace like Buffalo deals with routinely, the cities that deal with it month after month, winter after winter, mock us for not being able to keep up.
(no subject)
(no subject)
I hate when I we have the threat of a snowstorm and people start getting worried that they wont have enough food in the house that they can't last the day it takes to get theroads cleared. Things like the blizzard of '78 just don't happen anymore, our weather predicting ability has so improved since 1978. But still people are always reminded of it when the weatherdroids say it's going to snow and they get all hurry hurry, we gotta stock up on bread and milk...
I do nothing but look forward to the snow. I am pretty sure that even if we get four feet of snow, the roads will be sufficiently clear within a day that if I need to, I can get out.
During the blizzard of '78, my family was still able to walk the 3 miles to the nearest convenience store to get milk for the neighbor family who had two toddlers and a newborn. Oyr street, being a dead end didn't see a snow plow for 6 days following the end of the storm, it wasn't a priority. But we still got out, we had to do something, we were going nuts being cooped up for so long in a house with no heat in all but two rooms (we were able to close off all the rooms in the house and just live in the kitchen and living room with the woodburning stove) and no water (we had well water, no power for the pump). We ended up melting snow on the woodburner just to flush the toilet. Ah the memories...
(no subject)
What I don't understand is bread FREEZES quite nicely. And you can eke out milk with dried milk and some cream, which keeps for quite a while in the frig. Eggs last for a while, too. So if you're that panicked, why not invest in a freezer, stock it with bread, make room in the fridge for extra eggs and cream, buy some dry milk and put it on the shelf and go to the warehouse store and buy the 24 pack of Charmin? If they'd do this once a month during December, January, and February, they'd avoid the lemming reaction.
And the driving skills in most of BaltoWash are water soluble. It's not so much the snow but the fact that it's wet.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
There we were, at Model UN in the middle of DC: a thousand or so high school students, at dinnertime. It had been snowing during the day, and about six inches fell -- enough to slow things down slightly at home, but probably not enough to close school. A gaggle of us from my school looked at the hotel restaurant, which had lines a hundred deep, and decided to walk out to find somewhere to eat.
Washington was *deserted*. I don't mean "quiet", I mean "ghost town". We walked down the center of Pennsylvania Avenue, because it was entirely unplowed. We walked for most of a mile before we actually found an open restaurant (a Mom and Pop Greek joint on the second floor overlooking the road).
It was utterly bizarre. At home in NJ, that much snow might reduce the traffic downtown to a quarter of its normal levels, but the road would get plowed. Here in MA, I doubt six inches would have even that much effect -- the plows would have it mostly cleared by the time the snow finished falling, and lots of folks would go about their business. But as far as I could tell, it managed to totally paralyze Washington...
(no subject)
That doesn't explain why it always goes horribly wrong on the first day too, though.
(In my experience, the first snowfall of the season in Boston also causes everyone to lose their minds. Sort of like *any* rainfall in LA...)