I just stepped out on our front porch to experience the full fury of the monster storm that is slamming so much of the country right now. We have been hearing the wind howling more and more fiercely, but it’s only when you open the door a crack that you can fully appreciate the fury of this kind of storm. The latest update says that we have a sustained wind of about 38 miles and hour with frequent gusts to 45. . . and this is not the worst of it. Over the next several hours, gusts are expected to top 55 miles per hour just as the snowfall worsens. . . which is about as bad a scenario as one could imagine. And before the night is out, we will have had a foot of snow- or more- with this incredible storm.
As the snow falls and the wind howls, the newscasters talking about this storm keep using a phrase that absolutely boggles my mind. . . . “blizzard-like conditions.” Doesn’t that phraseology imply that this storm resembles a blizzard but in fact isn’t a blizzard? And isn’t that incredibly dumb mishandling of the English language by people who should know better? These are Blizzard Conditions…. Real Blizzard Conditions. . . not Blizzard-like or Quasi-Blizzard or Almost-Blizzard Conditions. This is a Blizzard with a triple- capitalized B in a bold-face font, underlined three times, with five exclamation points after it.
Of course, just about everything that can be closed is closed tonight and tomorrow. . . although at the moment, Carthage is planning on being open for business tomorrow. That may seem incredibly foolish, but as a mostly residential college (that is, with the vast majority of students living on campus) the standard practice is that Carthage remains open no matter what, although this storm may make that incredibly challenging. An email from the dean’s office explained that maintenance would be on duty tonight until 9 p.m., trying to deal with the snow, and then returning at 3 am. to resume their efforts. That’s what boggles my mind the most- the thought of someone having to climb into their car in the middle of the night and head out in this monstrous storm. I imagine that whether or not Carthage can be open tomorrow will depend a lot on how successful those maintenance folks are at getting back to campus during the height of the storm.
Gateway Technical College will be closed tomorrow (they were already closed tonight) but WGTD will be on the air…. although without yours truly, who will be staying home with the boss’s blessing. General Manager Dave Cole is actually demonstrating extraordinary commitment to our listeners by sleeping in the studio tonight- just in case it proves impossible to get there tomorrow morning. In an absolutely brilliant stroke of genius, Dave arranged for one of our part-timers to actually ride along on one of the city snow plows tonight- armed with a recorder as well as a unit that will allow live broadcast. Assuming that nothing happens to prevent that, we will be able to give our listeners a ring-side seat to what amounts to the front line of this battle with nature…. the actual plowing of roads…… which will be a hundred times more interesting and informative than all of the dozens of TV reporters who will stand in the snow, saying “it’s really bad out here!”
The only thing I find positive about the timing of this storm is that it should be pretty much all done by the time the cast of “The Beggar’s Opera” is set to resume rehearsals tomorrow evening. Had it forced any of our remaining rehearsals to be canceled, we would be in an impossibly difficult situation. But Mother Nature must be an opera fan!
Stay safe, everyone. Blizzard-like conditions are nothing to mess around with!
pictured above: I snapped this photo in the middle of the evening, before any of the huge snowfall had yet occurred, but when the wind was already raging. I know it’s a dark image, but I think it captures the oppressive nature of this storm- and it also gives you a pretty good look at the huge drift already forming in front of our front door.