I’ve lived in Cleveland, driven in blizzards, gone to the movies with 16″ of snow outside, and even had to stay the night in a seedy motel once driving from Cleveland to Louisville when the highway iced over. So 5″ of snow should be no problem for me, right?
Trust me. It’s a problem. When you live in the South, northerners are fond of saying, “it’s not the snow that scares me, it’s the other drivers.” But that’s not really true. In all fairness to my Southern brethren, it’s hard to drive on roads that aren’t cleared and we just don’t have the equipment down here that they had back in Ohio. I just heard on the news that Atlanta’s airport only has enough equipment and crew to de-ice 10-12 planes per hour. The busiest airport in the country,  with roughly 2400 departures and landings a day, can only de-ice 12 an hour. Nobody’s going anywhere in a hurry.
And then there’s the freezing rain that would be a problem no matter where you live. Our temperatures down here tend to hover right around freezing during snow storms. Â Go up a few degrees, it’s rain. Drop a few, it freezes. It’s a mess. That is what’s happening today. We have sleet and freezing rain coming down on top of the lovely snow that fell last night. So we’re all working from home, at least until the ice coats the limbs, which will fall and knock out power lines. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
We don’t own a snow shovel, nor do our neighbors. No sleds, either (plenty of cardboard boxes we can turn into one) – but it’s hard to go sledding with ice pellets slapping your face anyway. We’ll all stay indoors and post pics of our snow-covered patios on Facebook. And make french toast with all the bread, milk and eggs we stocked up on!
It’s the South, People. We live here, in part, because of the mild winters. We’re not equipped for snow storms. So just sit back, relax, and – er – chill. 🙂