Snow Blows

We got 1.2 inches of snow today here in Philadelphia. Even after the 23-inch blizzard they got a few weeks back, the TV weather people were acting like drivers should prepare for utter madness during their morning commute. But I guess that's the way things are in this town. The snow stopped falling by 9am; by Noon, it had already melted off the cars in my parking lot.

I just got back to Philly the other day after 3 weeks in Syracuse over the holidays. As we all know, they get much more snow up there. A good two feet or more fell the last week I was in town, and unlike the one-shot deal they got here in Philly, this was the kind of snow that just piles up endlessly. It keeps coming... and coming... and it doesn't seem to stop. Ever. Think Chinese water-torture in the form of lake effect snowfall. It was even worse 45 minutes the north in Fulton, which made the national news for... the only reason for which Oswego County EVER makes national news. Fulton got 55 inches of snow.

But we who hail from upstate New York are hearty souls. We don't get fazed by a good heavy continuous snowfall (though we do get really frustrated and sore from all the shoveling). Hell, in the midst of this two feet-plus that fell, I went out to the bar at least twice... as long as the roads are well enough plowed or salted for me to get home, I'ma get my drink on! That's how we are in Central New York. However, this feeling of invincibility also has the tendency to make us REALLY BAD DRIVERS when it snows. Usually this only occurs the first few times it snows, as it has been at least 4 or 5 months since the last time we had to put up with driving in snow (okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration... in fact they just had a record 9-month snowless streak in Syracuse before all this recent madness started). But people usually fall into a routine, at least until the weather warms up in February (usually around the week that Winterfest happens... it's like clockwork), and then when we get snow again in March or even April, it's like the first day of winter all over again.

Lately however, bad winter driving seems to be the case all the time. I blame SUVs. I'm certainly no environmentalist who wants to get rid of all the gas-guzzlers, but the mentality that SUV drivers have when it snows is foolish. "I have 4-wheel drive, I can drive at my normal speed in this weather!" Uh, no, you can't. But there they go, whizzing by you at top speed and making you fear for your life because, well, they're bigger than you and they are going quite fast.

There seem to be three kinds of drivers in this type of weather: 1) the aforementioned psychos driving their SUVs 55-65 miles per hour on the highway even when there is a good inch or so of snow pack on the roads; 2) the uber-cautious drivers who see snow and immediately come to a crawl on the roads (even the highways), people who do not just exist in places like Philadelphia or DC or Atlanta where it doesn't snow often but also in snow havens like the 'Cuse; and 3) you. See, you're a smart driver who knows his/her way around a good snowstorm and has been out in this mess countless times before... sometimes you may slip into the behavior of the uber-cautious but for the most part you know your limitations and you stick to them. Which means that you drive your car while being super-afraid of EVERYONE ELSE. Think about it, when you talk about the way people drive in winter weather, what do you always say? "It's not me, it's EVERYONE ELSE who drives psychotically on the roads!" Admit it, you do... and if you don't, then you're probably in category #1.

Regardless, snow is not an excuse for stupid. Snow does not mean that red lights become optional. If you whiz right through a light well after it turns red and your excuse is you couldn't stop because you would skid... that's what the YELLOW LIGHT is for! It means slow down! That gives you plenty of time to avoid skidding into a red light. Stop signs are similarly not optional. But the most fun comes any time you get to your destination and you go in search of a parking space. Drivers (at least the ones in upstate New York) seem to operate by a series of self-imposed "winter parking rules" when it snows. What this means is if you can't see the lines in the parking lot, PARK ANYWHERE! This includes taking up two spaces at once (or even three... yes I've seen it happen), parking out of the space so you're actually in the road going between two rows of parking spaces, and other similarly stupid maneuvers. The net effect of such winter parking rules is that you end up with fewer parking spaces and more people circling around the parking lot... and oh isn't that a lot of fun?

This warning against stupidity also applies to people who choose to get around in snowy weather by walking. We've had a lot of incidents in the winter time where people have been hit by cars because they were walking in the streets. The excuse we hear is the sidewalks aren't shoveled, so municipalities pass laws requiring residents to shovel the sidewalks in front of their homes so that people don't walk in the streets. Guess what, folks... IT DOESN'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE! The last couple days I was in Syracuse, I noticed not one or two but SEVERAL people STILL walking in the street even when all the sidewalks on that block were shoveled! You can't change these people's habits, apparently. One more argument against nanny-state regulations, I guess.

Unfortunately these walkers (and anyone who is out trying to dig out or brush off their cars) have to deal with not just the crazy SUV driver flying up the street. If you live in the Syracuse neighborhood I was staying in the last few weeks, you've also had to deal with CRAZY SNOWPLOW DRIVERS! Snowplow drivers are not supposed to go any faster than 35 miles per hour... on the HIGHWAY. This is because these are big hulking vehicles and they are not built to fly down the road, certainly not any better than SUVs are. But I swear this snowplow operator was doing 40 in a residential area! I literally dove out of the way of the guy at least twice because I was convinced he was not going to be able to go around me without flipping the thing.

So after dealing with all of this madness, you can imagine how relieved I was to escape the Lake Ontario Snow Machine and make my way back to Pennsylvania. As I crossed into the state on I-81, I saw electronic signs warning of "Snow Squalls Ahead." All I saw the whole way down were occasional flurries... maybe that's what people in PA consider to be "snow squalls"? I can't even imagine how my friends here dealt with two feet of snow at one time. Apparently, they ordered a lot of pizza. The few pizza joints that could operate in the storm did so by delivering pizzas on snowmobiles, proving they were nothing if not resourceful. All I know is I have no fear of anything that could possibly happen down here the rest of this winter, because I've seen it all living in Syracuse...