14th March, 2005 —

Common sense would seem to dictate that when you live in a region where snowfall affects the locals on a consistent yearly basis, these same locals will know what to expect from this snowfall, and will calmly adjust their routines in order to maintain sanity and the safety of themselves and those around them.

Common sense, it would seem, goes south with the ducks and old people each winter.

It’s a phenomenon that defies whatever form of logic or rationality you can apply. You can set your watch to the storms that blow through New England every single winter. Yet each time snow looms, people absolutely lose their goddamn minds. New Englanders look at every first flake with the same confusion, fear and wonder that a Kenyan toddler might. This asinine behavior generally manifests itself in two phases: Pre-Storm Panic and During-Storm Driving.

Pre-Storm Panic:

The initial rumblings come at least four or five days in advance: “S’posed to get a lawtta snow on Seaahhtuhday. I heuhhd it’ll be twelve inches oh moah.” Actually, they give the first news the sort of blasé response that any sane person would expect of people who endure multiple snowfalls each year. More snow; big deal! But then, the Day Before arrives. For the 24 hours leading up to a snowstorm’s onset, my marvelous local comrades act like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have just been sighted. The result is a mad scramble to the supermarket to buy…everything.

Of course, any sane person knows that in modern times, the long term effects of even a huge snowstorm are negligible. This isn’t the fucking 19th century. Meteorologists spot these affairs in their telescopes a week out, salt trucks and plows are loaded, fueled up and put in position, and the authorities are placed on notice. The end result is that even when the Storm of the Century hits (also a yearly occurrence – read on), the region is fully braced for impact and ready for rapid response, and the roads are clogged by snow for no more than a day and a half. Life proceeds pretty much as normal after that, except for a few lingering reminders: the powdery footprint-pocked blankets of snow over people’s front lawns, the mud-caked sludge at the side of the road sprinkled with yellow funnels of dog pee, and the towering snow mountains deposited at the fringes of mall parking lots.

But during that Day Before, it’s absolute fucking chaos at the supermarkets. Frenzied crowds of soccer moms and bridge-playing grandmas bustle around emptying whole shelves of product into their squeaky-wheeled carts. They literally run, as if losing the race to complete their shopping before the appearance of the first snowflake would spell the cancellation of their drive home. Further, they load up enough non-perishables to stock a bomb shelter. I once traveled to a local market for the sole purpose of spectating the madness, and an old woman slammed into me from behind with her shopping cart which, when I spun around to glare at her, had within it – this is no lie – 24 rolls of toilet paper. I’ll let you do the math on how many days’ supply that represents for an average person, but if that’s what she’s expecting to need during her – again – day and a half, MAYBE of being snowed in…I’d say the weather is not her biggest problem right now.

These are citizens fueled by fear, and that fuel is dispensed by the TV weather people. Cautiously conservative at first (lest they be mistaken about snow totals and lose their reputation as the “most accurate forecaster in the tri-county boroughs” or whatever), they launch into gleefully dire proclamations of the utmost severity the instant there’s no chance left that the approaching storm will leave less than three inches of snow in its wake. The forecasters pace before the camera, making sweeping arm gestures at their ominous maps. They frown cheerfully into your living room as they issue their stern warnings of the impending disaster…this is, after all, one of their few yearly chances to shine. They use war terminology and speak of fronts and invading air masses from Canada. They report “white-out conditions,” as though the meaning of this were obvious (I think it involves correction fluid). “The Blizzard of ’05,” as they christen the catastrophic squall, is dumping heavy snowfalls on the region whose intensity has been matched in modern recorded history only by the “Blizzard of ’04,” the “Blizzard of ’03,” and the “Blizzard of ’06″ which the computer models are already predicting to arrive in approximately 12 months.

During-Storm Driving:

Don’t be fooled by the people before the storm acting like the Last Battle is at hand. Once the accumulation totals start to mount, I guarantee you that those same lunatics will be out there driving in the middle of it.

If that ever-elusive Common Sense were operating here as a factor, everybody would follow the advice of the doomsaying meteorologists and limit themselves during the storm to Essential Travel Only. After all, a bad snowstorm can be extremely dangerous to drive in: the roads are slippery and visibility is at a minimum. The newscasters make a big deal about the danger, don’t they? And after all that panicking and running around beforehand, it’s logical that people wouldn’t want to out in the midst of it, right?

Wrong. People love being out in a storm. As soon as the white stuff starts to pile up, they jump in their SUVs and head on out for some casual window shopping, sliding and fishtailing all the way.

The reason is this: New Englanders aren’t satisfied unless they have something to complain about. They don’t know what to do with themselves without it. Also, if they don’t arrive at work on Monday with their own “snow story” to contribute around the water cooler (with co-workers who ventured outdoors for the same ridiculous reason), they’ll feel left out. So risking their necks in the middle of the “white-out conditions” gives them a tale to add the flavor of excitement to their otherwise dramatically bankrupt lives. “Ohhhhh, I had to be out in that on Saturday, it was so horrible, I slid into a snowbank and mowed down two pedestrians and I almost died!” So, as soon as the locals see heavy rain or snow a-fallin’, they look around them, think to themselves “You know, I don’t think I have any spare vacuum bags around here,” pull on their ponchos, and head out to the appliance store. After all, what better time to bring the kids out to look at new TVs than when there’s the potential to spin off the road and get them all killed?

Now I am the last person in the world to object to other people murdering themselves with their own stupidity. The herd could use some thinning, to be perfectly honest. However, I condemn these irresponsible nitwits for the same reason I loathe drunk drivers: it’s not only their lives they’re putting at risk. Somebody has to be in the other car that they smash into headfirst, and that person could very well be me (since I’m usually the poor schmo who can’t get out of work even for a big snowstorm) or someone I care about. If some jackass wants to Darwin themselves and their offspring out of existence it’s no skin off my potato; in fact I welcome it. But as soon as their stupid reckless behavior gets me involved, we’ve got a major problem.

In any case, nothing I say or write on the subject seems to have any effect. People in New England love every panicky, wheel-spinning minute of their cataclysmic yearly blizzards, and the idiocy of it all never seems to sink in. It’s all really just a big extension of that awful “some weather we’re having” train of thought that seems to be the only thing boring people have to talk about…it’s literally the biggest source of excitement they have to latch onto. I just wish the latching didn’t so often drag me away from my own blissfully and rationally achieved state of mind: The weather happens and it’s just not that big of a deal.