Forecast: Snow

Tomorrow at this time, the brutally cold and outrageously blizzardy Great Snowstorm and/or Blizzard of 2018 will be hitting my central Virginia city. We expect to receive 1 inch of snow. Or perhaps 6 inches. Prognosticators are not sure about the amount. The dividing line between 1 to 3 inches to the east and 3 to 6 inches to the west runs right down the main drag in my little city. If that imaginary line shifts a few miles east or west, it will make a big difference in how much snow we get. But 1 inch or 6 inches, it will matter little to me. Either way, it’s a nuisance.

When I was a boy, I loved snow. I loved that schools were closed. I had a sled and a great place to go sledding. Of course, that was long before I had to shovel snow off my sidewalk or shovel a path from my back door to my garage, where my Jeep lives. Snow is pretty to watch falling, and a landscape covered in snow is also pretty, but the aftermath is a bother I don’t need.

My Jeep has 4 wheel drive, so I don’t worry about getting stuck. But I don’t like to drive my Jeep around town in a slushy mixture of snow and sand and salt, which is what is on the streets on the day after it snows. And when night comes and the temperature falls, everything freezes and the streets are slick with ice. I don’t like to have wet salt thrown onto the underside of the Jeep or into the wheel wells where it can rust sheet metal. And I really don’t want to have some driver slide his vehicle into my Jeep. So I prefer to leave the Jeep parked in the garage until the snow is gone.

If we get enough snow, maybe I’ll post some pictures here. Maybe I’ll post a video or two for the benefit of people who’ve never lived where it snows and have never had the privilege of digging out a vehicle and shoveling a path from a parking lot to a street, or helping a neighbor dig out his vehicle, or driving miles to pick up a friend or co-worker and drive them home on abandoned roads on a night when only snowplows venture out. So much fun.