Far be it from me to rival the conclusiveness of Mr. Sleet. Yet...the late Mr. Carlin was largely a denizen of New York City. And, frankly, those of us who don't live in the BosNYWash Belt are sick of the attention their weather gets. South Dakota is buried under 10 feet of snow? Whole counties in Oklahoma are flattened during tornado season? Pfffffftttt. Weather doesn't happen, y'understand, unless the subways are at least 5 minutes behind schedule.
Contrast this past Monday/Tuesday with tonight/tomorrow, for instance.
This past Monday, shortly after I checked the weather channel and verified that they were still sticking to their 25 - 35 cm (10 - 14 inches) of snow story, I logged into Twitter to be greeted with #Snowmageddon hashtags--not to mention the stomach-churning knowledge that our degenerate age has now decided to start naming winter storms as well as hurricanes and tropical storms. (Mercifully, my gag reflex was somewhat stifled by the oh-so-NSFW satire of The Lapine.)
Tonight here in L'Acadie, we have another 20-30 cm (8 - 12 inches) of snow on tap. Of course, nobody in the east coast U.S. media is freaking out. Because, well, it's not likely to stop your average New Yorker from going out for dim sum on a whim at 3am, so what's the big deal? Selfies of a meter of snow piled up against your Manhattan condo door or it didn't happen.
Which leaves all of us outside such effete hot-house meglopolitan ecosystems groping for a yardstick (or a meterstick, north of the border) by which to gauge the severity of the incoming storm. Having spent 40+ years in Wisconsin and Minnesota before transplanting myself to Atlantic Canada, I think I may have sussed out a few key indicators:
- Is the grocery store parking lot full? At 2 in the afternoon? On a Tuesday? (If the liquor store's parking lot is likewise that full...uh-oh.) More to the point: How distinguishable is the grocery customer base from the local Bridge Club? (Booyah for the hard-won wisdom of our elders.)
- Still at the grocery store, how many big blue bottles of water are heading out the door? Or--and I solemnly swear that this literally happened to me today--did the dude with the two big blocks of toilet paper hold up the checkout line by dashing back to the aisle for a third block?
- Are you already more-or-less taking your life into your hands every time you inch your itty-bitty car around a corner snowbank and already dreading the next time you have to drive*?
- Do you see your neighbours leaving their windshield wipers in the "up" position?
- Have tomorrow's ferry-routes between the mainland and the island already been canceled?
- Have you already checked the electric company's "Outages" webpage? And sanity-checked that it's bookmarked on your cellphone?
- (This is the biggie.) Has the game been cancelled? (In Wisconsin I'm talking about the high school boys' basketball game; in Canada of course I'm talking about hockey...all the way down to the Mites-league.)
Really-and-for-true, I'm not whining. I have the great, good fortune to live where other people vacation--and the still better fortune to work from home. And I'm actually grateful for temps. well below freezing because it means no freezing rain.
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* Fun fact for non-Maritimers: Where I live, they plant scrawny, top-heavy pine trees in the fall to guide the snowplow drivers in the winter. When the banks are almost level with those trees...oh dear...
