Snowmageddon* Eve

The end of the world is coming. 

Tomorrow.  Around noon.

It will be white, fluffy and cold. 

That’s right folks, it’s going to snow.   It’s going to snow a lot.

The official NWS forecast is calling for a 100% of snow from Fri – Saturday night, with storm totals potentially in excess of 16-24 inches.  They issued a winter storm warning this morning around 10 – 24 hours before the onset of the snow.  This is craziness. 

The media hype is off the charts.  It’s like a bad car wreck – you don’t want to watch it or get caught up in but you just can’t help it.  The panic level is through the roof.  This evening the gas stations were swamped.  The parking lots at the grocery stores were full.  I bet there isn’t a loaf of bread to be had within 100 miles. 

All the hype and all the “preparedness” is actually making me very nervous about the whole thing panning out as forecasted.  DC has a reputation for getting weather forecasts and no actual weather.  We frequently experience the hype and panic of a snowstorm only to end up with a cold 34* rain.  It’s very depressing living here in DC in the winter.

I have been watching this storm very carefully all week.  My “friends” from the Capital Weather Gang do a great job with detailed forecasts and explaining the science behind the weather.  I’m really not sure who they are, but they have great info!  The best info is in the comments on their blog posts, that’s where all the weather gurus weigh in and post model runs and stuff.  A lot of it doesn’t make sense to me, but if you read enough eventually it all makes sense.  The comments are getting a bit bogged down with what I consider to be hype, but it’s still informative. 

I’m not the only skeptic around here and many people have voiced their feelings that this might end up being the biggest bust yet.  Every single time the weather guys at Capital Weather Gang have come back with scientific evidence of why this is almost a sure thing. But, still, I’m not counting any snowflakes until they fall.  I have been around the block way too many times around here. 

Naturally we were all concerned about the onset of the snow and when it would occur and if school would be closed. We spent a lot of time today discussing this at school.  What would happen if school was closed – when would we make up the day (we used up our freebie snow days back in Dec)?  Would they do an early release?  What if it gets really bad really fast and we get stuck?  Would we go all day?   As I was driving home I pulled up to a stop light and pulled out the phone to check Facebook – I’d just gotten it loaded when the light changed, as I was locking the phone and putting it down my eye caught the top status update.  It was from FCPS – all I caught as I put the phone down was “closed Feb 5”.  WHAT????  I pulled over as soon as I could to read it for real.  It was amazing but true, Fairfax County had announced at 4:30 pm that they would be closed the next day.  Not a flake has fallen and not a flake is forecast to fall for another 18 hours at the earliest.  

I’m glad they made the call they did.   It’s not worth the risk.  Way to go Dr. Dale! :-)  I’ll happily make up the day no matter what happens.  That being said, the fact that school is already closed for tomorrow furthers my feelings that this is going to be a bust.  Nothing ever lives up to expectations.  

Those in the know seem to disagree, every model run shows more snow on the way.  I hope I’m wrong.  I hope we get every flake.  I want to see 2ft again.  But I’m not ready to get emotionally attached to the idea. 

Despite my skepticism, I am prepared.  Yesterday I went to Wegmans (we very conveniently had a snow day, which should have been a delay because everything was fine by 10 am) and stocked up on pretty much everything.  It was prefect because the real news of the storm hadn’t quite hit yet and the store was very quiet! I have gas in the car.  I have toilet paper.  I have a huge stack of books to read.  I have a cross stitch project and a crochet project.  I found a few movies to TiVo (oddly enough Comedy Central is showing Balls of Fury**, Meatballs, and Spaceballs – sensing a theme there?).  A few days just hanging out at home watching it snow will be nice.  Assuming it actually snows.

 

 

*Snowmaggedon is the “official” internet name of this storm.  The Dec storm was “Snowpocolypse” – yes, it’s been noted that Snowmaggedon should have come 1st to be keeping with the end times.   There are some other great names for the storm floating around:

snoverdose

snowbliterated

"Snowpocalypse 2: The Sequel"
"Snowpocalypse 2: Son of Snowpocalypse"
"Snowpocalypse 2:Son of the Mother of all Snowpocalypses"

**A few weeks ago I saw a preview of Balls of Fury and it looks hysterical – I’d never heard of it before then so I was pretty excited when I found it on this weekend when I was going to be snowed in! :-)