A chill wind blows
Posted By Russ Emerson on January 19, 2009 at 5:45 pm
In the past few days we’ve had nightly low temperatures in the single digits, but there’s been no precipitation.
That’s due to change tonight, as we’re expecting a snowfall starting tonight and running into the morning. I’ve heard we’re to expect a whopping great two to four inches. That should be enough to hide the disgraceful state of my lawn.
Today being Monday, the first day of my “weekend,” I headed out to do a couple of my regular tasks — gas and groceries. Since I telecommute, I only have to gas up the pickup about every six to eight weeks, but this was the week.
You’d have thought the apocalypse was upon us, instead of a winter storm. The local gas station was a madhouse. The grocery store parking lot was, well, another madhouse. As I sat in the pickup lane (I order online — and today I was really grateful for that service) I couldn’t help but notice some of the cartloads of items people were wheeling out, presumably in preparation for the 2-4″ whiteout. One fellow, for instance, had a cart full of nothing but bottled water.
Another small family unit had a full load of… frozen food. Perhaps you’ll pardon me for pointing out that frozen food is precisely the wrong thing to stock up on in anticipation of a power outage. The cart was full to overflowing, so that the two kids had been drafted into carrying 12-packs of toilet paper.
I swear, you’d think people here had never seen snow before. Which is sort of funny, considering the number of yankees who’ve relocated here to North Carolina in recent years.
I’ll be staying off the roads tomorrow. If you think the shopping habits are bizarre, you should see the driving. Egads. At least I have sense enough to know I can’t drive well on snow or ice.
Just playing devil’s advocate here, but I think the stocking up on frozen food was in event of not being able to leave the house rather than a power outage.
Here in Baltimore we get once every 5 years or so a snow where leaving the house to go to the store is a royal pain for about 3 days (we live on a side street that is never plowed), but we’ve never had a power outage due to a snowstorm, that I can recall.
I should also mention while no one expects 4 inches of snow to be that big of a deal for driving to the store..I do remember the blizzard of I think 96..they originally called for 1-3 inches and then spent the whole day going “1 more inch, 1 more inch” until we ended up with over a foot.
Or today’s “30% chance of a passing flurry” that turned into a 100% chance of 3 inches.
What no white bread and gallons of milk? That’s what everyone here in KY buys.
Most everyone here in Georgia stocks up on milk, bread, water, toilet paper and beer. I guess Georgians have different priorities.
I also have more sense than to drive in the South during winter weather events. The non-Southerners who move down here think that they know how to drive in this stuff. Well, they probably could back home. But down here, it’s entirely different. It’s better just to stay at home as muc as possible.