Snow? What Snow?

Starting tonight and over the next few days, we are going to have a blizzard. The mayor of New York is waxing long and loud on TV, about the formidable task ahead for him and his people in the sanitation department. He spent much time extolling the virtues of those crews that will leave home and hearth to clear a gazillion miles of city streets. (Be nice if he showed as much respect for the cops). 

Weather people are lecturing with their brightly colored maps in the background. We know where this storm is coming from. Where it is going. What it will do when it gets there. And it's timing, almost down to the second.

It seems that weather people and mayors alike agree on one thing. There has never been a storm like this before. It is a monster. A virtual snow hurricane. Bull!

Apparently these people are too young to remember, or choose not to remember, the blizzard of seventy-eight. We ended up with three feet of snow in front of our house. We lived in Warwick, RI at the time. It was a week before we got plowed out. 

The worst part of that storm was the lack of warning. We were told there would be a snow storm but no one saw that beast of a storm coming. Those were the days when everyone had CB radios. I had one in the car, and our oldest daughter had a base station at home. That CB radio saved me. I was on the road when the storm hit. I started hearing reports of intersections jamming up and vehicles stalled out on route 95. I headed back to the barn.

Soon we were hearing that cars and trucks were being abandoned on the highways with people taking shelter wherever they could. So for a week we lived on french toast, soup, cereal, and what ever we had on hand. Actually, it was kind of fun. Like camping out for a week.

Then there was the year, I think it was 2001, that we had a winter total of 128 inches of snow at our condo in Woonsocket. There was no one real huge storm but every few days another eight inches or a foot. Now that was a miserable winter. 

But it is coastal New England in the winter. We are going to get blizzards. Every once in a while they will be monsters. That's the price you pay for living in God's country. Now go buy bread and milk, hunker down, and enjoy the experience. And let the young'uns do the shoveling.