Something we obviously know a lot about in central New York is snow. When we get six inches, it’s just another day at the beach, so to speak. Sure, we hate having to shovel it here and there, but we take it in stride for the most part because it is what it is.

I found myself in the Arirondacks last week doing a quick consulting gig. One assumes that they’re also used to snowfall of significant amounts, especially with views like this. One also gets into the notion that when you’re dealing with small towns that have smaller areas of snow to clear away that they’d be well equipped to handle it.

Unfortunately, that turned out not to be true. They were lucky, like the Syracuse area was, in that they didn’t get the quantities of snow that had been predicted. However, I found that with the amounts of snow that they did get, which was equivalent to the snowfall Syracuse got, they weren’t quite as well equipped as one might hope. I spent two days driving around in some pretty scary conditions, as I couldn’t just sit in a hotel to conduct my business. The hotel restaurant also closed earlier than I’m used to, so I had to go out and scrounge for food; thank goodness for McDonalds and Subway, the only two fast food places in town and, lucky for me, both were still open on a very lonely road.

It starts to make you appreciate just how lucky we are to have people who are skilled in snow removal. It’s got to be a tough process when there’s already so much snow on the ground. Yet, even in the worst of conditions, it’s rare to show up on a road that hadn’t had a plow at least attempt to keep up with the most inclement weather within a few hours or so. I’ve always appreciated it, and sometimes we have to experience something else to remember why we appreciate it.

Of course, we also end up with these snowpiles that are legendary. In Oswego last night to pick up calzones before the Super Bowl, it was wild seeing all the large snow piles everywere, something I’m used to because I went to college there. But we have them here as well, as you see this image of one of the snowpiles in front of the Wegmans I go to in Liverpool; yup, that’s their tower just above the snowbank.

Of course many of us have to deal with our own personal piles of snow as well. I know that after shoveling some of the heaviest snow of the season on Sunday my back was calling me names that military personnel would cringe at. This pile is lower than it was, thanks to a little bit of warming we’d had along with some rain, but it’s still pretty high when one has to throw new snow over it.

We’re a hearty bunch in central New York. Sure, we don’t have to deal with fires and hurricanes and other such things, but we deal with snow and ice, which can be paralyzing. It’s great knowing that we can get it out of the way and get on with our business. And yes, we can still laugh at those people down south that close school and businesses when they get a couple of inches of snow without guilt; that’s what they get for living “down there”, if you know what I mean. 😉