Snow? We Spit On Snow!

Actually I don’t spit on snow unless I can’t breathe, but here in central New York we don’t sweat the small stuff all that much. There’s something about living in an area where 9 of the last 10 years have given us more than 150 inches of snow in the Syracuse area, way more on the outskirts, that makes us feel pretty arrogant and dismissive when we hear that other areas of the country might be getting hammered.

Such is the case of the last 24 hours where, trying something different, the Weather Channel decided to name a winter storm for the first time ever, calling it Nemo. This was once again predicted as a perfect storm that would drop feet of snow all up and down the East Coast and dump grand amounts in certain places further in as well.

Truthfully, it lived up to its hype in many areas. Some areas of New England got more than 2 feet, some 3 feet, and a few other places got more snow than they’re used to. Something many of us weren’t paying attention to was another winter storm that was hitting Michigan at the same area, dumping a nice load of snow on their as well.

The Syracuse area got somewhere between 7 and 10 inches, depending on where you lived, and up north they got between 10 and 20 inches. Yup, that’s a lot of snow for sure. Here’s the thing though. Syracuse acknowledges that it gets a lot of snow, so it and the surrounding communities budgets its money to take care of the roads.

The main roads were actually pretty clear yesterday when the hardest snow was hitting, which was around rush hour, although it was slippery in many areas. My wife and I were driving home and it wasn’t even a blinding wind that we’ve seen in much worse weather. It could have been worse in other places.

I’m thinking we’ve all gotten to a place where we realize that weather patterns are changing. Any Eastern communities of the United States who aren’t starting to plan for these types of winter events better, budgeting for real snow removal services and equipment, and able to clear their runways so they can keep air traffic going are failing and should be ashamed of themselves. The only reasons planes don’t leave Syracuse is because the airports those planes have to fly to are shut down; that’s just a shame.

Massive weather events… we get it. Here, 8 inches is just another day; a messy one but we get on with life. If we get hit with more than that in a day, or are averaging an inch of snow an hour, yes, that will slow things down some, and we had that for a few hours yesterday. But the ability of a community that’s prepared to get roads clear as soon as possible for the protection of its citizens is a community to be admired for its foresight.

Winter weather… yeah, we’re living in the right place. Some might have said at some point yesterday they wished they were in Florida… hmmm, I’ve got nothing for that. 🙂