Hang in there you Easterners!

 

Well as I absolutely 100% predicted the so-called "storm of the century" that had NYC city officials screaming at everyone to stay home, the MTA cancelling all public transport and yuppie transplants fighting over bottles of iodine was an absolute washout. We've gotten a relatively light covering of snow, nothing out of the ordinary at all. Of course the stock reply will be "better safe than sorry," but when I looked at Accuweather.com at 9pm last night it said that just a few inches was expected. Nothing like the catastrophic THREE FEET that would grind the city to a halt. But naturally they waited until 8:30am to announce that the subways are up and running again.
 
Meanwhile everyone (including me) who announced their businesses would be closed today are now facing the task of seeing what they can salvage of the day - calling clients who may or may not still have the day off work and will or won't require services, and trying to rouse employees who thought they had the day off out of their slumber to tell them that they should come into work, but I can't tell them exactly what jobs they have on because clients have to find out whether THEY are back to work or not before they can let us know if they need our services. Another classic New York City train wreck.

Karyn
It snows in the subway?  Wow!!

Just like British trains, the whole thing grinds to a halt if there is so much as a leaf on the tracks

News stations, and especially local news stations, love weather stories. It's their bread and butter. The slightest hint of inclement or hot weather and they get to dispatch reporters to every single corner of the city for live reports every 10 minutes. "And now it's over to Bill in Flushing. What's the weather like there Bill?"

A good friend of mine who was planning on flying into NYC this week was refunded the money for his tickets due to the "impending catastrophe". The airlines had cancelled a lot of flights due to this.
 
Sadly, he was flying in for his mom's funeral.

Across the bottom of the screen this morning on CNN was the caption "Deadly Blizzard". I wondered how anybody could get killed by a storm with so much advance warning. Turns out, somebody died in a sledding accident. Look for anti-tree legislation come Spring.
 
Meanwhile, this must all be a source of great amusement for Canadians (and probably Scandinavians, too). I imagine somebody in Alberta watching the news..."Look, it's -10 down in Missouri. When was the last time we saw temperatures that high? Back in October, I think. At least we don't have any trees to worry about."

MakeShift
The only thing I've seen an epidemic in is the number of idiots that we seem to have grown in this country.

So true. Thank you academia.