Going for a Five-fer?

It’s cold out there.  Cold enough to need to keep the taps dripping and yesterday was windy enough to blow the deck chairs around.  Storm’s a-comin’…

We are expecting six inches of snow and ice to fall here starting at 4:30PM today.  I get no sympathy whatsoever from relatives of mine that live here:

Yikes!  I’m pretty sure weather like that is what turned a bunch of fed-up folks into Bering Strait pedestrians 20,000 years ago…

I’ve already mentioned that it only takes half an inch of accumulation to cause official two-hour delays for many schools and businesses in the area.  Here’s a handy chart that covers a wider range of snowfall totals:

0 to 0.5 inches - Drive normally.  No signals ever, near-constant Swervy McTexty contests, horribly underestimating the amount of gas one needs to successfully cross a miles-long bridge.  You know… normal.

0.5 to 1.0 inches - Two-hour delays everywhere.  Annoying non-stop work chatter about the hassle of brushing snow off the windows of the car with the swipe of a hand.  The roads are coated in a quarter inch of loosely-packed sand because it makes them 10% safer on straightaways and 20% less safe on curves than just doing nothing at all.  Gotta be proactive about these things.

1.0 to 3.0 inches - Before the snow: As tradition dictates, stores are looted for all the bread and milk the locals can get their hands on.  Maybe they build little forts or something with the supplies.  After the snow: The citizenry has split into two groups.  The first group of people think that driving at continental drift speed makes the world a safer place, and the second group has 4x4s and therefore thinks that they are invincible as they slalom from lane to lane around the first group coating everyone and everything with tsunamis of slush.  The ditches begin to fill with a 50-50 mix of both groups.

3.0 to 6.0 inches -  Before the snow: Grocery stores begin gouging folks for “snow melt” which comes in 10-pound bags for about eight bucks each.  This “snow melt” is a uniform mixture of gravel, sand, cedar mulch, ashtray fillings, cow corn, barber shop floor sweepings, and rock salt.  After the snow: The primarily snow-shovel-less citizenry quickly find out that push-brooming or garden-troweling the snow aside is too hard so they begin to hopefully chuck handfuls of Morton’s, Epsom, and bath salts onto areas where they remember their sidewalks were once their single bag of snow-melt runs out.

6.0 to 12.0 inches - Before the snow: “Snow melt” is available only through black market sources for $25 per 10-pound bag.  All of the propane tanks for gas grills have been purchased or stolen.  After the snow: It is illegal to drive unless you are actively involved in ticketing people who are trying to get to their job at the hospital or military base. The guy down the street takes out his cross country skis and tools around the neighborhood yelling “Pay attention to me!  Pay attention to me!” the whole time.  Kids discover that building a snowman or even a decent snowball requires a certain type of the white stuff and is a lot more labor intensive than cartoons let on.

12.0 to 18.0 inches - Before the snow: All of the ammunition from the gun shops, Walmarts, and Bass Pro Shops is gone.  The excited chatter has died out.  Even the world-weary jokes about global warming have sputtered to a stop. It has gotten quiet.  People have started mentally sorting their neighbors by “feebleness” and “probable deliciousness” for the eventual cannibalism is bound to result from this storm.  After the snow: Every third person has the idea to design and sell t-shirts that commemorate the event, but don’t actually follow through with it.  Next time, maybe.  Cell phone service grinds to a halt as all of the 3G and 4G networks find themselves unable to deal with the volume of snow-based selfies that have been unleashed upon the world.

18.0 inches and up - Possible temporary loss of electrical power in some areas.

Since the snow is scheduled to start soon and go on through the night it is very likely that school and work will be cancelled tomorrow, and, believe it or not, maybe even Wednesday turning this three-day weekend into a five-day weekend.

Fingers crossed!