Light Snow Possible—Region Gripped by Panic
02/11/2010
Weather forecasts say we may get a few inches of snow early Friday morning. And maybe it will actually happen, although these predictions usually come to little or nothing. The last time we had enough snow to cover the ground was around 1995, and of course it melted within a few hours. As of this afternoon we had seen a very small amount of sleet, and on my way home an hour or so ago it was raining. The current temperature is 41F/5C.
Yet the decision has already been made to close the public schools tomorrow, and other entities are following. Not my employer, though. Our president is from Cleveland and spent the last ten or fifteen years in Chicago, so he was, I hear, totally bewildered when someone asked if we would be closed tomorrow—closed by the mere possibility of light snow. We’re told to assume the college will be open until and unless we’re told otherwise.
And yet the closings are not entirely irrational if you think of them as being intended just to keep people from driving, because most people are going to drive like complete idiots in the snow.
As I think I’ve mentioned here before, on Thursday nights I normally have an hour of eucharistic adoration at a church up the road a few miles. When I got home tonight my wife had left me the following note, which pretty well sums up the effects of a prediction of snow around here:
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