Scary Weather

The wind is roaring, the snow is still coming down, the slush on the roads has turned to glare ice. And thanks to the wind, the snow is drifting...

The stairs were clear of snow this afternoon but the whipping wind has now dumped a lot of snow on the top two steps. The road has some bare spots that are slippery, and some spots with more than a foot of snow. There's been a lot of police chatter with lines down, a tree on someone's house, a lot of crazy things going on.

Most of the time I don't mind being home alone; but with the scary weather, I'd feel better if Luis was here. However, he was supposed to fly home this morning. I had called him yesterday and told him it was extremely unlikely that he'd be coming home. He wasn't sure, either. Well, I called him around 1000 and he answered his phone, something that would he wouldn't have done had he boarded his 0700 flight. He's still in Omaha, Nebraska and at first he wasn't coming home until Sunday morning. Nina called, pitched a fit (or at least was strenuous with the airline) and now he is coming home Saturday night. I'm not sure how big a difference this makes, but hey, why not?

We had been hearing back in March, April and May that this winter was going to be severe. I tend to believe the longer-range forecasts that are general, since day-to-day weather is extremely hard to accurately predict, but trends are easier. So when the models suggested 1977-78 winter, it sounded pretty bad. Not to mention that the summer panned out exactly as forecasted. Global warming? What global warming?

At first, the winter did not seem so bad. Yes, we did see some flurries in late October (I saw snow in mid-October in Vermont, but I was assured that this is not so crazy); yes, there'd been light snow in November and December, while it did not bring a white Christmas (I am not religious, but even I understand the value of a white Christmas), it did bring some snow, and substantial. (Was that the longest sentence or what...?) Just before Christmas we received several inches of snow. At this point I can't recall what we had. But January has brought some snow and February was nuts. The 10th brought around 16" of snow to the house and this... well, now I can't tell with the wind and drifting. However, the NOAA Web site is reading 8" - 12" tonight (for NOAA, "tonight" means the period of darkness) and 1" - 3" tomorrow (daylight). Tom is supposed to come over tomorrow to dig me out (quid pro quo) but I am not confident that getting out will be a possibility.

I am also not confident enough to drive. I drove a very sensible 20 miles per hour to see the doc and I was fine with that. When I had to go from a stop, I started slowly and with that layer of muck, there was no hitting the gas without sliding a bit. My heart stops when I feel hydroplaning. I know what to do when this happens, but it's me and my driving that scares the hell out of me, it's everyone else.

Luis vehicle, strangely called a "crossover vehicle" (I'm not sure, but I think the name is a guilt-assausing technique to make people feel better about their carbon footprints), is better - much better - than my vehicle for this kind of thing. But no vehicle is perfect at this and it is all the more maddening that people drive so much more poorly than ever and the SUV producers absolutely sell their vehicles on the idea that the driver and/or passengers will be perfectly safe no matter what.

No.

The answer is no. You can drive a Suburban or whatever ridiculously large vehicle you want, but this will only ensure that you will kill more people when you have an accident on the ice. I don't care what you drive - the ice is the great equalizer. And there is a whole lot of it right now.

OK. I'm hoping off the soapbox for now.