By Sally Gracie
It’s not surprising that I dreamed of snow last night; I was watching The Weather Channel before I went to sleep. Two young women in very short skirts and low-cut blouses hyped the “historic,” “record breaking,” “blockbuster” blizzard that would dump as much as 3 feet of snow on parts of the Northeast on Monday night (Jan. 26) through Wednesday (Jan. 28).
My snow dream included flashes from past snowfalls.
An image from a weathercast from Minnesota or Wisconsin earlier this winter became a refrigerator sculpted into my front door frame, filled with Lean Cuisine, Ben & Jerry’s, and soft drink cans. The electric power was gone, but, fortunately, my dream house had a pellet stove and lots of battery-powered lanterns. My Verizon cell phone wasn’t working, so I had no way to contact anyone. I couldn’t see anything from the windows because snow had drifted up close to the roof. I woke up before the dream turned to total nightmare.
Nightmare is what many people on the East Coast will be facing for the next few days if the forecasts are accurate. We in the Methow Valley will be thinking of our friends and families there, who are being told to “be prepared to be in a house without power for 48-60 hours.” No thanks. Been there, done that last summer.
I came to the valley expecting the average snowstorm to be as sizeable as that really big storm a few years before I arrived here in 1999. My younger son and his buddy were in the valley visiting Reed and Salyna at their place on Texas Creek when that storm happened. The photos of the storm show a van literally buried. The roof of their “barn” collapsed from the weight of the snow.
I’ve since learned from experience that ordinary snowstorms here may not drop as many inches in one go-round as the occasional storm dumps in Baltimore. The difference is that our snow stays on the ground through the winter. I much prefer accumulating snow to one big blizzard. Heavy snows and a blizzard in February 2010 created more snow in Baltimore for the season than we get in Twisp in an average year.
Even a threat of snow empties supermarket shelves and opens schools late in Baltimore County. Baltimore County Public Schools were even closed today before the historic snow had begun; early today the mayor of New York City closed his schools for Tuesday. Baltimore County Schools (where I was employed for close to 30 years) schedules seven “just-in-case” snow days into the calendar. The Methow Valley School District no longer allows for any snow days at all in its schedule. The district just wasn’t using them, according to a Liberty Bell High School employee. It should be noted that Baltimore County has 800 school buses and a litigious clientele.
Weather reporters refer to the storm that’s advancing on New York and Boston as “crippling,” a “bomb,” a “blockbuster.” The Weather Channel (TWC), not NOAA, has named the storm. When I lived in Baltimore, hurricanes had names. Winter storms, even blizzards, didn’t. These days, if a committee of meteorologists at TWC deems that the storm will impact a significant number of people, they name it. Snow and winds accompanying the “Historic Blizzard of 2015” will affect 28 million people, according to TWC. That’s why it has a name: Juno.
Besides politics, disastrous weather makes great television. That’s why I’ll be watching TWC.
My very good neighbor Nolan Wilson has kept my front yard cleared of snow with his snow blower and, if that’s not working, a larger piece of machinery. If my snow dream ever becomes reality, I expect he’ll be here. I hope he will.
