The Sky is Falling!

Breaking news ... We are about to be buried under 3-6 inches of snow! Everyone run for the hills!!

(dramatic pause for effect)

Yes, you read right. A measly 3-6 inches of snow and our entire region is freaking out. All of my friends from Chicago and family in Pennsylvania and Utah are laughing hysterically right now.

Schools are closed here today. They actually started to announce closures at 5pm yesterday.

The grocery stores are out of eggs, milk, and bread due to the mad rush of people last night. I guess everyone makes French Toast when it snows?

The punchline? There is no snow yet.

They are expecting it to start around 10am and go through the day, but right now, there is not a flake to be found.

Personally, I think it is a little ridiculous coming from Chicago where I had one snow day my whole four years of high school -- and that was actually for an ice storm. I can remember walking the 1/2 mile trek up the hill to the bus stop in at least 8 inches of snow one morning.

But here in Cincinnati, everything shuts down on the very threat of a snow flake.

In a way, I get it. Chicago is flat (think corn fields as far as the eye can see), and Cincinnati has hills that put San Francisco to shame. I know I wouldn't want my kids on a bus going down a rural back road that has a 30% incline hill.

However, I maintain that the main difference is two things:
(1) Cincinnati doesn't know how to plow roads properly
(2) Cincinnati drivers don't know how to drive properly (snow or no snow, but I digress)

Plowing here is a joke. I always chuckle when I see the Cincinnati plows making their first pass down an unplowed road throwing salt ... then on the next pass they plow all the salt right into the ditch. Talk about a waste of city's money and time!

Instead of sending plows in all different directions, they need to put three plows following each other and doing the entire road in one swipe. They way they are doing it, one plow makes a single pass down the road, but by the time that plow makes a loop and gets back to that same place, people have run over the snow that it has moved and thrown the snow back onto what it just plowed!

I will cut the drivers a little slack here. Even the best snow, most experienced drivers have problems on the horribly plowed roads of Cincinnati.

However, the fact that most Cincinnati drivers don't have basic driving skills makes snow driving so much more difficult. If anyone here just used a turn signal, knew how to properly merge onto a highway, didn't tailgate, knew that a yellow light means begin to slow down, and respected the high speed passing lane rules, things would be better on the roads.

However, I blame most of their horrible snow driving skills on their parents. Not one kid I went to school with in Chicago didn't have a parent take them to a snow filled parking lot and made them purposely spin out in the snow. Either you learned how to control your car in the snow -- break properly, recover from a slide, etc -- or you didn't get to drive when it snowed.

So, given the roads and the drivers, I really don't blame the schools for closing down or for everyone stocking up for French Toast right before a big snow storm.

When the snow starts falling, I'm going to pack up my things and head home to bunker down with the rest of Cincinnati.