Snow Job

Some random thoughts about the recent snow. The weather forecasting business must suck. When they are wrong and they are wrong more than they are right, they get kidded unmercifully about getting paid to be wrong. When they are right they are the messenger you want to shoot. After a couple of swings and misses over the past winter they nailed it last week and we got crushed. It seemed on Thursday that they had missed again but by Friday when it had snowed constantly for 48 hours we were in deep do-do. In fact the do-do was so deep that the U.S. P. S. said “Uncle” instead of "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these courageous couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” To be fair that is not even their motto. Some Greek guy coined it. Probably doesn’t even snow in Greece. So schools were called off both Thursday and Friday and cruising the blogosphere I see people hating the “snow school” announcements on the TV and the radio. I was in radio for more years than I choose to mention and trust me, reading school closings is worse than listening to someone read school closings. In this day and age with you kids and your fancy email and texts it does seem as useful as mammary glands on a bull. But the one year we eschewed the tedious reading and asked anxious kids and parents to go to the web site, the ratings went down. And back on the air the closings went. Other rantings on the internet were hating on the plow guys. In some posts that I read violence was suggested after the plow went through and buried the freshly shoveled driveway or sidewalk. I myself wondered at the timing when I unburied my mail box for the third time (a futile effort – see above) to return to the warm and cozy house only to see my work undone by the big yellow truck. Two things to remember here. First: The road must be cleared. The mailman might come! And secondly it’s basic physics. The snow on the road when pushed off the road must go somewhere. Chances are it’s going on the side adjacent from whence it came. Physics don’t know it’s your driveway/sidewalk/mailbox. Physics does what physics does. Get over it. Suggestion: Wait it out. Shovel once – later. Lastly a shot across the bow of the annoying neighbors kid who spent this summer noisily clearing a hillside yards from my at home office to make a snowboarding area. I work from home. I’ve not seen it used. Once. What a waste. I could be wrong.