Monday, December 27, 2010

What Did You Do in the Great Blizzard, Mike?


The word for yesterday and today was shovelinglots of shoveling.

The worst thing is, I’m still not done yet.

For Exhibit A, turn to the photo accompanying this post, taken from my front porch. You’d never know it, but running from the lower left to upper right of this picture, there’s actually a wall, only you can’t see it because my area of Northern New Jersey received two feet of snow. Close to 30 inches accumulated from the drifts blown by all those winds, thus concealing the stone wall in front of my house.

The funniest headline of the weekend was in the local daily, The Bergen Record, yesterday morning: “Northeast Braces for Looming Blizzard; Forecasters Expect 11 to 16 Inches to Fall.”


Add on another 10-12 and you’d be closer to the mark, fellas.

As late as Friday, as I recall, the meteorologists were expecting the snow only to “graze” my neck of the woods. Long Island, these wise men were saying, would be the area really hit.

Guess we know what happened to that prediction, don’t we?

The events of the last weekend reinforce one of my most strongly held contentions: that the idea of a science of weather is a misnomer. When it comes to getting the facts on the ground right, weather forecasters are about as reliable in my book as astrologers—and, for the record, I hold the latter in abysmally low regard.

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