My impressions on living in a snow globe…

Okay I have no impressions. Lot’s of whining though.

I was struck as I left the house this morning by just how much snow has accumulated on our front lawn. It’s a little ridiculous. I’m 5’9”; in my winter boots, I’m probably just under 6’. The snow bank on my front lawn is a good foot higher than that. And it’s snowing. AGAIN. In fact I don’t think it has ever stopped snowing. Every day we get a little bit of snow - an inch here, half and inch there. And then God has a real chuckle and we get a good foot or more dumped on us. Before you know it: 7-foot snow bank on the front lawn.

I looked out the bus window on the way home from work yesterday and my eyes were just even with the tops of the snow banks. That’s just insane. Snow-clearing here is a well practiced art. When we were flying to Chicago, the woman sitting next to me on the plane was a from Chicago. She was proudly telling me about how many plows Chicago had - about 275 I think. I pointed out to her that in a city half the size of Chicago (possibly even smaller I don’t exactly know how big Chicago is; yup even smaller I googled it. We are about 1/3 the size.) we had almost double that. But even with all that - with 479 plows - the city can keep up even a little. The budget ($65 million) has been blown but even throwing more money at the problem isn’t helping. There just isn’t the capacity to do more. People have stopped griping (well almost) because it’s pointless. It’s obvious this isn’t anyone’s fault. I think at this point the only thing that has saved us was an insanely warm January thaw that allowed about 2 feet of snow to melt.

I have no doubt that there is more snow coming. Heck it’s supposed to snow all weekend - not a storm just a steady and relentless dusting. The next big storm will have us all yelling “uncle.”

From last week’s paper (we’ve had a 15 cm or 6 inches more since then):

And according to its records, the capital had seen 223.2 centimetres [7 ½ feet] of snow hit city streets prior to yesterday's storm, which puts it slightly ahead of the record-setting 208.9 centimetres of snow that fell between November 1970 and the end of January 1971.

My parents have a certificate that the local paper was handing out in 1971 that said “I survived the winter of ’71.” It was that bad.