Gathering (Thought) Clouds

So, unless you live under a rock you may have heard there is a little storm heading this way. Apparently it is set to dump a lot of snow on us (for real this time!) and cause all sorts of problems. Here are just a few of the things I thought about while doing my storm prep this afternoon...

-As I had said before, I feel like a lot of the panic surrounding these storms are media-driven. I understand that is the media's job to warn people and it is better to be safe than sorry but there is a fine line between advising people how to be cautious and prepared versus whipping them into a scary graphics-fueled frenzy. For example, when they keep comparing this storm to the Blizzard of '78, it does not exactly inspire calm emotions. Beyond that I don't even know why people are so anxious. I know we are out of practice with storms of this size but if you think about it, this storm is arriving at pretty much the perfect time. (And this is coming from a guy who had long-standing plans this weekend. If I'm not complaining than neither should you.) It is supposed to start in the middle of the day on Friday and will be done by Saturday afternoon. After taking Saturday night and Sunday to dig ourselves out, operations can resume on Monday. Considering this is predicted to be the biggest storm we have had in about 3 years no one can really complain if we only end up having one day get interrupted. It is like Mother Nature is easing us back into the way winter normally operates.

-In my various travels to stores I was quite pleased that I didn't see many people buying shovels. I'm always confused as to who the people are that need shovels when the threat of snow is coming, because even though the last couple of winters have been mild this is still New England - you're never going to make it from December-April without having to shovel at least once. So I can't help but question what they did with their old shovels. Instead, what I seemed to see the most of this afternoon was people standing in their driveways, fighting with their snowblowers. In some ways this is forgivable, because the last few storms haven't been bad and I'll be the first to admit that occasionally it is just easier to shovel (plus you feel like a wimp breaking out the snowblower for three inches of snow). Still, I can't help but think more than half of those people are not going to get their blowers fixed in time. The parts on these machines may be less complicated than a car, but they are no less confusing if you don't know shit about engines. Moral of this story? Sometimes being lazy and hauling out the snowblower for light, fluffy snow pays off.

-The only thing about this storm which annoys me is the way it somehow snuck up on us. I was originally scheduled to go to a show tomorrow night (already postponed), so when I heard that there was snow in the forecast for this week I started paying closer attention to the weather. On Sunday (which I will remind you was all of four days ago), the weathermen were saying that while we would get overnight snow a couple of nights during the week each would be small in nature and their combined total would be less than 5 inches of snow. Even 48 hours ago they were still saying the storm would start out as rain and wouldn't change over to snow until late Friday evening. Cut to this afternoon when the City of Boston said it wanted everyone out by noon and that public transportation was shutting down at 3. I know weathermen are trying to predict the future, but if you are going to be this consistently bad at it why even try? Scale back to only looking four or five days into the future and increase your accuracy. Of course they won't, because there are never consequences for their bad predictions, even though there should be. If you think about it, towns are going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars paying town workers to pull long hours preparing the trucks and sanding the roads in anticipation of the snow. And it if never comes all that money will have been spent for nothing, as the sand literally goes down the drain. Any other profession that would be fraud but in the weather business you just have to take a few days of good-natured ribbing from the anchor desk. Doesn't really seem like a harsh enough penalty.

-Of course, the weathermen aren't the only people who need to think things through a little bit more leading up to this weather event. I was in the grocery store this afternoon, buying a few last-minute essentials. (And I do mean a few - the only thing in my basket were English muffins, ice cream and whipped cream (for hot chocolate, not the ice cream). Meanwhile, the woman directly in front of me was hauling two carts full of supplies and rang up a total of almost $300 worth of food. I have to say, our vastly different approaches had me questioning if she is wildly over-preparing or I am under-preparing. Does she know something I don't know or is someone simply better at keeping a stocked pantry?) While I was generally pleased with how calm everyone was keeping because there was no pushing or shoving, the registers were incredibly understaffed. If you know there is a storm coming and people are going to try and get all their food shopping done for the next few days crammed into this afternoon, wouldn't it make sense to put extra people on at the registers? Considering you probably won't be open on Saturday I think you can afford to hand out some extra hours this afternoon.

-Just a couple of months ago I was feeling really good about the American public's ability to control the price of certain items. Once gas prices got above $4 a gallon I thought they would never go back down but after a few months of people opting for staycations and car-pooling to save money the price of gas started to go back down. It still isn't back to the $1 a gallon it was back in 2000, but at least it was a little bit better and restored by faith in the practice of supply and demand. In fact, some analysts said that if the trend continued gas might have even dip below $3 in some areas. Unfortunately, a couple weeks ago it started to creep back up - I can only assume the reason was as simple as the oil companies hoped we wouldn't notice. Then came yesterday, when I drove passed a station in the morning and it was $3.50/gallon and by the afternoon it was $3.70. There is no way of defending this. It is not like they got a new delivery - it is the same gas that was in there that morning. The only thing which changed was the forecast. They know everyone likes to fill their tanks before a big storm and they've got us over a barrel - it is price gouging, pure and simple. The thing is I'm not mad, I'm actually kind of grateful. In some ways this is a nice litter reminder to everyone about a few key items - we all think oil companies suck for a reason, we are right about that fact and we should never forget it again.