Playing Chicken With Mother Nature

When it comes to snowstorms there are only so many possibilities. You can either get a lot or a little, and that snow can either be wet and heavy or dry and fluffy. That's pretty much it. There is not much you can do about this, you just have to sit back and wait to see what kind of hand you are dealt. As a born-and-bred New Englander, I am pretty indifferent by this point. I'll deal with whatever Mother Nature feels like throwing at me, just as long as she rewards me with nice weather come golf season. As a result, the only time I get annoyed at snow anymore is when it comes in the form we had this weekend: the slow-moving, light-snowing, multi-day storm.

This weekend we were scheduled to get snow starting Friday night around midnight and ending... maybe St. Patrick's Day. This storm was very hard to predict because it was coming at us from a Southwesterly direction. Apparently, that is the lunar eclipse of the winter storms. You knew it was going to be a problem because the weathermen (who are only successful around a 35% clip anyway) were trying to hedge their bets and kept reminding viewers how unpredictable this storm was. They were practically apologizing in advance as they predicted the time of the storm to be 12 to 48 hours and drop anywhere from 2 to 12 inches of snow on the ground.

As we awoke yesterday morning to find about 3 inches on the ground and a lull in the snowing, we debated going out to shovel. But, the thing about veterans of New England winters is that it is almost insulting to shovel such a paltry amount of snow. My house has 3 trucks in the driveway. Is three inches of snow really that bad? We just drive over that. I look at snow removal like removing a band-aid. Let me just do it once and get it over with. So when you have a storm that could last for 48 hours, you never know when is the best time to go out and shovel. Too early and you'll be right back out there later. Sure, you'll be moving less snow on that second trip out there, but it's still another hour of standing in the snow. If you move too late, however, and the snow has had time to pack down a little and then it's heavy and a pain to move.

We ended up gambling and letting the storm just play itself out. As it turns out, we gambled correctly, because by this morning only another 3 inches had shown up and it stayed light and fluffy and the snow was just about over. In fact, there were sections of my driveway (in the wind tunnel) where no snow ever accumulated. That is a new one. We had the whole area cleaned up before the Patriots game. Normally we are not gamblers in my family, but I almost feel like I should run out and get some scratch tickets.