You Must Be Used to Cold Weather! You're Canadian!

Winter weather warnings started on Wednesday. Forecast:  a Friday storm. Snowpocalypse. Snowmageddon. Ice. Sleet. Freezing drizzle. Snow. Power outages affecting millions. Trees downed. Highways shut down. Airports paralyzed. Traffic snarled. Schools closed. Businesses shuttered. For days. And it was headed our way!

I checked weather.com every hour. 90% chance of a wintry mix changing to snow starting Thursday night and lasting right into early Saturday morning. It looked bad! This could be REALLY bad! The web site headlines bleated: Winter Storm Could Impact Millions!!!! The margin headlines were even worse!

“Don’t Let THIS Happen To YOU!!” (It showed a photo of a badly-blackened, frost-bitten ear!)

“THIS Killed 50 Million People!” (You don’t want to know!)

“BEWARE! Dangerous New Threat Ahead!”

“That’s Not Snow….it’s SPIDERS!”

“What’s the Germiest Place in Your House!?!”

“Sperm Whale EXPLODES!”

Holy cats!! What was happening? The sky must be falling! This really IS going to be The End of our days on Earth! No wonder everyone was panicking!

By Friday morning there was a ½ inch of snow on the ground! TV morning shows announced that the schools were closed! I hopped in the Subaru and drove cautiously along empty, dry streets that the snow plows had already cleared to get to our local market. I bought blizzard provisions and a bottle of Scotch. (Might as well have emergency supplies!) Temperatures plummeted to near freezing!

I watched the snow fall all day. It must have piled up to, Oh Merciful Heaven, 4 inches by nightfall! The evening news showed people scraping ice off their windshields! And plows clearing streets! Someone sent in a photo of lawn chairs with little piles of snow on them! It was ghastly! I had to look away!

But you have to hand it to people. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. A neighbor was out there with his snow blower at 11:00 on Friday night, making his sidewalk safe again. It makes your heart glow a little brighter knowing we CAN overcome.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I have a healthy respect for a decent snow fall. I grew up in Winnipeg. I learned to drive in Winnipeg. And as many of the people we meet here in the US like to observe, “You must be used to cold weather! You’re Canadian!”  As unwitting as that comment may be, it’s true! It fazed us not one bit to drive in a snowstorm. I can remember only 3 times in the 25 years I lived in my hometown from the day of my birth to the day Ken and I moved away that snowfalls caused any major disruption. I think snow caused schools to close only once during my childhood and teen years. The temperatures might be 30 below. The drifts might be higher than your house. And visibility might be zero in a blinding snow storm, but we walked the 6 blocks to school anyway, by gum! We wore long underwear! Our buses ran! We never lost power! Our Dads drove to work! I mean, if you were too scared to drive in snow, you didn’t go out all winter. We were cool. My Dad taught me how to handle a 360 degree ice skid in the Polo Park mall parking lot. We carried survival gear in the trunk and we laughed at winter weather.

Ken and I moved to Vancouver in 1980. In the rain forest on the west coast, snow is an oddity and on this occasion the white stuff was really only promising to pile up to an inch or so. We didn’t pay too much attention to our first snow fall….UNTIL….I rode home on the bus with a co-worker that day. There was an air of panic among the passengers. My friend explained to me that a snowfall could paralyze a city that was so unused to it — a city with no snow removal equipment. A couple of years previous he and his office mates had slept at their desks one night because a monster snow storm had shut down the city. I freaked. There was no way I wanted to do a sleepover with those clowns! After that I became terrified by snow. I avoided winter driving whenever possible.

Eventually we moved to Buffalo. Now we’re talking snow. I regained my driving confidence once again. But Buffalo is a city that generates serious snow. Snow that could defeat even us intrepid Canadians. One Christmas season we got a steady eight feet of the stuff within five days. Eight feet. Do you know how much snow that is? It is an impressive amount, is what it is. All we could do was dig a tunnel for the dog so she could go out to do her business.

So, I must admit that I giggle a bit at all the fuss made over a mere dusting of snow. And I’ve learned whenever someone blurts out, “You must be used to this!” to smile proudly, sagely and say, “Yes, yes. We Canadians thrive on the cold!”