#Snowpocalypse
When I was little and growing up on a tropical island off the coast of Georgia, I used to dream about snow. Every Christmas, as the thermometers inched painfully slowly towards the 30 degree mark, I would think, “Yes. This is it. Snow! It’s going to snow!” and every year I was inevitably disappointed and had to make due with building creatures out of cold sand instead of wonderful, fluffy snow. Luckily, I made up for my lost snow days by moving to the Snow Belt of Michigan for college and then moving to Chicago. I have since made many a snowman, the traditional I’m-not-a-mature-adult snow penis, snow angels, and enjoyed lots of sledding, slipping, and sliding.
This winter has been one of the
coldest winters in recent history. Many areas of the Midwest and New England
hit record low subzero temperatures in January. Schools closed, jobs told
employees not to come to work, and frostbite advisories were plastered
everywhere. The South also experienced a bit harsher winter than they were used
to. Instead of the typical one-week per year of 30 degree temperatures,
suddenly southerners were experiencing a week and a half of freezing temperatures. Sheets of ice formed on cars, there
was a need to use the words “salt” and “truck” in the same sentence, and some schools
also shutdown…for 40 degree weather.
Okay, okay, I will cut the South
some slack. When “cold” to you is 60 degrees then I can see not wanting to go
to school in 40 degree weather. I mean, I went to a high school in Brunswick,
Georgia that was laid out like a college campus so we had to walk outside to
get from one class to the next and we still had to go to school when the
temperature dropped to a surprising 20 degrees sometimes, but maybe the
students nowadays have thinner skin. Or maybe parents now care if their children drop dead
of hypothermia. Who knows! The point is, even though in my day we still went to school when it was below freezing, I can understand that 40 degrees feels like 5
degrees to someone who doesn’t have boots and instead has to wear toe-socks and
flipflops in the winter (a style that I totally embraced back in high school).
Yesterday, my Facebook feed began to
blow-up with talks of snow from my Georgia friends. Friends from South
Carolina, Alabama, and Florida commented that they were stocking up on Taco
Bell, pop, and chocolate to see their way through the coming snowstorm. Others
wished everyone a safe drive to and from work in such conditions. One status in
particular caught my eye: “Attention all [Georgia State University] students!
Campus will close as of 1 p.m. due to severe weather conditions. Go stock up on
bread, cheese, and head home NOW!” I asked my friend what the “severe weather”
conditions were. His response: “There’s a chance of snow flurries.”
Snow flurries…snow FLURRIES?!
I need to be more sympathetic. I
need to remember what it was like to live in the South having never experienced
a Michigan blizzard, driving through blinding snow in Indiana, or walking over
solid sheets of ice after freezing rain both melted and froze the mounds of
snow around my Chicago apartment. I’m trying to remember that many of my
southern friends have never even driven on ice before. They think layering is
putting on a long-sleeved and a
short-sleeved shirt at the same time. I doubt there’s even a snowplow within a
100 mile radius of my home town!
I try to remember when I was new to
the snow. When I was that crazy girl running around Kalamazoo College’s campus
and asking my roommate to take pictures of me with my mouth wide-open, head
tilted straight back, and tongue collecting as many snowflakes as I could. I
remember refusing to walk with my Midwestern friends in the winter because they
walked like normal people while I shuffled like a crippled penguin. I remember
spinning out my first time on an unplowed road and yelling at my car to just please just stop! I remember the time I poured
Morton salt on the steps of my house senior year because I thought that’s what
everyone meant by “salting.” I, too, was a snow-virgin once!
And then I see Facebook posts about “My
windshield wipers are frozen. I can’t go to work?!,” “Shame on the governor for
not calling a state of emergency!” and hastags of “snowpocalypse” and
“snowday2014neverforget.” The Starbucks on my island closed at 3 p.m. because
of the cold. People are posting prayers and quotes from the Bible, saying that
they all need to stick together to get through this harrowing time.
IT IS TWO INCHES OF SNOW. STATE OF
GEORGIA, CALM THE FUCK DOWN.
Also, can we please all remember
the time in 2011 when Atlanta really did
have a snow storm? There was about two feet of snow covering the whole city.
For Chicago that’s like, “Two feet sucks, but whatever. We can still go about
our day,” but two feet in Atlanta is actually something to talk about. The city
only has four snowplows and those all had to go to the airport. So yes, Atlanta
is no stranger to snow that halts the entire city, but is this now going to
happen every time is snows? My mother
works for a college on the coast of Georgia – they closed because the "roads may be icy." My boyfriend lives
outside of Savannah – his work also told him not to come into work. Even the National Parks
closed!
Listen-up, fellow Georgians and
southerners, I am here to tell you that snow is not the enemy. Snow is not
there to kill you or do you any real harm. Snow is basically rain that’s
decided to solidify and stick around for a while. Yes, it’s cold as fuck (I
know a “fuck” can’t be cold, but stick your bare foot into a pile of snow
sometime and you’ll learn just how accurate of a description “cold as fuck” is)
and it’s slippery and can cause some serious damage when your car spins out or
you fall asleep in it or there’s an avalanche, but that’s a lot of snow. A lot of snow. Not 2 bloody inches.
And let’s take the moment to talk about
the actual weather-related danger that poses a threat to the South,
specifically the coastal regions: hurricanes. As I said before, snow is not
there to kill you, but hurricanes kind of are. Hurricanes are board-up-the-windows-and-get-the-hell-out-of-dodge worthy. They come with winds so strong
that they can send a regular flimsy McDonald’s straw straight through your
hand. They come with flooding, which really sucks for the coastal regions, where people
have destroyed the marshlands to build McMansions (i.e. you covered up the
natural sponge that could have saved you from a flood, but now you risk losing
that boring, bland house you built -- good job!).
Hurricanes come in categories,
everyone knows that: 1-5, least damaging to incredibly dangerous. I can
remember evacuating for a hurricane once: Hurricane Floyd. He was a 4. I would
say about 40% of my island left for Floyd. Some people boarded up their
windows, covered them with packing-tape Xs, and moved valuables off the ground.
Those of us who left went inland. As per usual, the hurricane hit the Gulf
Stream and, instead of slamming into the Georgia islands like it was supposed
to, it careened into South Carolina.
My point is, there was no real
urgency to the hurricane. Some of us (mostly old people and people with kids)
took a little road trip inland with minimal preparations to our homes and then
we came back. Since Floyd, my family has never evacuated again. The last
hurricane to come that close was Charley. I was working for the National Park
Service at the time, a small settlement that is now archeological ruins on St. Simons Island. Charley
was also a 4. Did we evacuate? Nope. Did my National Park flood? Oh yeah. Quite
extensively. Did we still have to come to work? Yep.
And yet, this winter, in fact as I am typing this piece, the park is
closed...for 30 degree weather. My mother also told me that they called in the
National Guard in Atlanta. That's right. Chicago gets -15 degree weather that "feels like" -40 and we get what? A snow day? Or at least those of us with very nice bosses did. Atlanta gets less than 1/4 of a foot of snow and they get the bloody cavalry. I know a guy who goes to Georgia Tech who spent 12
hours trapped in his car before abandoning it on I-75 and just walking home.
Some students even slept overnight on their school bus because the traffic was in such a gridlock. Some kids even spent the night in their elementary school because of the snow!
State of Georgia and just the South in general, get your shit together. You're embarrassing yourself.
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