I just finished shoveling six-plus inches of snow off our cars and driveway (the forecast called for something like 3-5″, but we’ve got more than that, with no slowing in the fall). In honor of the first significant snowfall of the year, a poll:
This one has ticky-boxes, which will play hell with the percentages, but I’m too tired to deal with complaints about radio buttons.
The problem around here is more that the rain and snow have combined to make three inches of slush, which is mighty unpleasant to walk in.
Since I live in Southern California, I changed the word ‘snow’ to ‘rain’.
SoCal people, for goodness sakes, it rains EVERY year, at least once or twice. You have to drive in it every year. Having accidents occur on the freeways at ten times the rate for non-rain day just embarrasses us in front of the rest of the nation where it rains more than once a year.
For the rest of the nation, don’t ask what happens in SoCal when it snows in the Valley or the Basin. It isn’t pretty. We all believe the snow looks pretty on the mountains and we all become complete driving idiots when that cold, wet stuff is on the freeway. I-5 is closed by the CHP when flurries start because of the idiot-driver factor. My uncle from Pennsylvania almost gave himself a hernia laughing at us closing a freeway because of 2 inches of snow.
Lauren, one of the benefits of living in a place where water falls from the sky every few days, throughout the year, is that oil doesn’t build up on the roads. I once had the experience of driving in Los Angeles in mist/drizzle in November. The results were as slick as any ice I have encountered here in New Hampshire. I’m sure the idiot driver factor doesn’t help, but the first rain of the season in that part of the country is every bit as challenging as the first snow of the season around here.
That said, I share your exasperation at those who haven’t figured out by the second event of the season. I’m not a native to this area–I grew up in Florida and never had reason to attempt driving in snow until I moved up here. I figured it out quickly because around here everybody assumes you already know how to deal with it.
And then there was the time I was visiting Bellingham, WA (where my sister lived at the time), and encountered a snowstorm. Bellingham is 20 miles from the Canadian border. At the time, the city had zero snowplows–snow levels rarely drop to sea level in western Washington–so they had to borrow the crew that normally plows the Mount Baker Highway.
Haven’t gotten any snow here in Vancouver yet, but they’re forecasting some for later this week. I’m stoked – I love the snow and I take transit to work so it doesn’t affect me much.
It doesn’t snow too much here – maybe a couple feet total each year, but we don’t really have any snowplows either. We just bolt plows to the front of all our garbage trucks.
I’m a “Woo!Snow” because here (Tuscaloosa, Al) if there is snow on the ground there is no doubt school will be closed. I’d also be thinking “I hope it snowed in Montgomery,too, so the governor will close the state offices.” There was an ice storm a number of years ago and, according to my co-workers, when the director called to find out when he could send everyone home and the person he was talking to said “What ice storm? It’s sunny outside.”
I love snow.
From several hundred miles and 75 degrees Fahrenheit away it is lovely white stuff that leads to picturesque scenes and highly entertaining, if sightly worrying, crashes that I get to see on the TV set. Typing this my window is open and the outside temperature is 77F. A but of a gusty breeze and a more cloudy than it was a couple of hours ago, when the skies were a beautiful blue, but nice, very nice.
This is why I live in Florida.
I love snow but please, please, keep it and cold weather in general to yourself. You wanted snow, and ‘real’ seasons and now you have them. In spades. Enjoy. Be merry. Stay off the roads and try not to freeze.
I walk to work, so usually my reaction is “Woo! snow!” but it must be a bit warmer here in New Haven, so we had nice pools of slush mixed with our snow, so my actually response is “Grrrrr slush”
Eric @3, Sadly, this is our 2nd rain event this season, so the oil isn’t as bad as for the first rain. I grew up in California and I see this every year. People drive like idiots, even in El Nino seasons or extremely rainy years like 2005’s 38 inches. It’s embarrassing.
My husband and I were reminiscing about 1988, the last year where we had snow stick to the ground. It stayed for almost 12 hours and Los Angeles came to a halt. It was fun.
I do admit that it isn’t horrible to take my son snowboarding in the San Bernardino mountains in the morning and then go miniature-golfing in shorts and sandals in the afternoon.
What are you on about? It’s summer (down here).
Though you could just change “snow” to “bushfires” and have it correct.
3+ feet forecast for Watertown and the surrounding counties on the east end of Lake Ontario. Having come back from a year out in the Columbia River basin where it rarely snows, I want those winds to shift southward. All we here in the ‘Cuse are going to get is maybe three inches over the next two days.