3697 Eh.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

"'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds."

-- Malaclypse the Younger --

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Well, the "blizzard" left me underwhelmed.  At the country house a normal "biggish" snowstorm would leave a foot of snow or so with a layer or two of ice to make the shoveling or throwing interesting.  (More than once I'd had to go down the 300+ foot driveway with a coal shovel chopping the layer of ice on top of the snow into squares and removing the squares before I could use the snow thrower.)

Here, there was about 9 inches on the roof of the van, but by the time I got outside it was heavy and wet.  I got about 1/3 cleared from the 2-car-length driveway when my little electric thrower couldn't handle it any more (sticky heavy snow kept clogging up the chute).  Daughter cleared the town plow plug across the end of the driveway, neighbor George used his big thrower on the lower half, and I still have to clear around the van with a shovel.

Daughter and Nugget did return from DC yesterday morning.  I had called her to say that if she wanted to stay at a hotel, I'd reimburse her, but as it turned out it was mostly rain and the roads weren't bad.

I was amused by the following comments on a Yahoo e-news storm report:

Big Momma  •  16 hrs ago
I 'm watching, as the snow reaches 3 feet in depth, my husband staring at the window. If this keeps up I may have to let him inside.

critters_r_me  •  6 hrs ago
There are hundreds of cars stranded on the Long Island Expressway. Gee, I bet they wish someone had told them a storm was coming.

WilliamH  •  19 hrs ago
First you were finding NEMO, now you're tracking NEMO.
You're going to make that poor little fish paranoid.

I know that some areas really did get slammed, and the constant break-ins on the TV with officials warning of doom were justified there (but those areas are used to winter extremes!), but around here fear-mongering crap like that is just going to cause people to wave warnings off, even when it really is serious.

P.S. What's with the current trend for naming storms?  Like, we don't know what to call it without a name?
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