Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Slush

It’s been three days since we had the “biggest snowstorm ever” in New York. The temperature warmed up today so it’s a big slushy mess out there.

Funny, but the snowstorm was pretty much a non-event. I remember a snowstorm in ’77 (or was it ’78?) that shut down the city for three days and that one apparently isn’t even in the top five record snowfalls. There was also a big one around Easter back in the 80’s that doesn’t rate either.

Am I remembering things wrong?

I think what’s happened is that they handle the snowstorms differently now. Back then, whether it was for financial reasons or things were simply badly managed, they waited until the snow fell, then they tried to clean it up. That just doesn’t work. Now they’re out there salting and sanding before the street even gets wet, never mind waiting until there’s already six inches of snow on the ground and the plow can’t make it down the street.

Of course, the downside to all of this preparedness is that there’s never a reason to close down my job.

Joy. :(

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was a kid living on Long Island when the Blizzard of 1977 struck. The town I lived in used my neighborhood to decide whether to open schools: they'd send a school bus through (there were a lot of hills). If the bus got stuck then we had a snow day. If it made it through, school was open.

For whatever reason I don't remember one in the 80s but I do remember another big one in the mid-90s, maybe January of 1995. That led to a pretty ugly several days of closed schools, too.

I also remember one in 2001 that closed down schools all over Long Island but they didn't cancel school in New York City. I left the house a couple of hours earlier than usual (it was still snowing) and got to school at 6 AM because there was practically NO traffic on the Long Island Expressway. And, of course, each class had maybe three students in it anyway. Go figure.

Jardena said...

You have my sympathies. Mother Nature finally remember that it was winter in Colorado, so instead of the sunny clear days in the 50's we'd been having for almost a month, we now have highs in the teens and prepetual snow. The following statement will only make sense to people who have lived in outside the mountains in CO, I forgot it got cold in the winter here :)

Michelle Pessoa said...

Claude, do you remember the year we had like 17 snowstorms? I think that was '93. That was SICK! I worked in NJ at the time so I had to drive through that every day.

Oneida, the weather was nice today. I have no problem with 50 degree weather in February!

Jardena said...

I have no problem with 50 degree weather in February!

Nor do I, and now that it's 3 degrees out, I really miss it.

I remember that the '93 -'94 winter had a lot of snow storms. My school's policy was to have a half day, so we had to get there on time, but they'd let us out at 11ish, and that counted as a full day we didn't have to make up later. I thought that was a great policy, esp. since my high school was a lot closer to where my family lived than my elementary school had been.