Posts Tagged ‘blizzards’

Normally, it never snows in my part of Virginia. Just a single flake will be the leading news story, even if it’s unconfirmed, and announced with the fervor of a Bigfoot hunter – “Flurries sighted in Virginia Beach!” It simply doesn’t snow here. Every few years, we’ll get a couple of inches. That’s about it.

Imagine my surprise, then, to wake up this morning to this:

Ugh. The kids already had Monday off for some sort of teacher workday (is it me or are there a ton of those these days? I don’t remember there being that many when I was in high school, but my kids’ school has 2-3 per month it seems), but I have a bad feeling they may not have school on Tuesday either. Hopefully the roads will be clear enough by Monday afternoon that we can still get to speech therapy on time.

Everything is closed today, of course. A few area businesses and churches have taken the precaution of announcing their closures tomorrow and Monday as well. Nice. We’re expected to wind up with 7-10 inches by the time the snow stops (it’s been snowing all day, with occasional bouts of high wind, very exciting *rolleyes*). I haven’t heard anyone say the dreaded B-word yet, but as they trot it out for a couple of inches, I’m sure this will be called the Blizzard of ’10 any day now (the Blizzard of ’96 was only about 6 inches, as I recall). Just a whiff of snow sends the locals into a frenzy of panic, whereupon they buy batteries, flashlights, space heaters, and water.

Now, I went to college in Utah, as many of you know (Zoobies!), and this is like a joke to me. 6 inches? They might mention that casually on the news if nothing better happened: “And finally, last night we got six inches in some parts of the Valley.” Certainly not the abject panic of Virginia. But, it actually does snow out there in Utah, one of the many horrific things about that state, but at least people aren’t wimpy about snow there. 6 inches wouldn’t even cause a delay in the schools. Hell, dropping a foot overnight never delayed BYU. People in Utah don’t freak out at the very thought of driving in snow.

Of course, this area is very sanguine about weather that would cause panic in Utah. Hurricane? Gale-force winds? Feet of rain? Flooding? Category four? Let’s throw a hurricane party! Evacuate, you say? Why the devil should we? The grill’s fired up and we’re gonna ride out the storm with hot dogs and beer with the neighbors.

But snow? zomgcanneverleavethehouseagain.