Winter Armageddon 2007

This morning I turned on the Weather Channel and saw that 6-10 inches of snow were forecasted for Rhode Island. Instead of running out to the supermarket to buy every loaf of bread and gallon of milk (as is the Rhode Island winter tradition) I went to the Chocolate Delicacy instead. Who cares if I run out of bread or milk? I have chocolate!

It was 11 in the morning and the snow hadn’t started yet. I was on my way to Todd’s office in Providence to drop off his client gifts that I’d picked up at the Delicacy. Not a flake had fallen yet, and already there were RI DOT snow plows idling in the breakdown lane on I-95. I chuckled at the Rhode Island fear of snow insanity, and sped along to the big city.

I left Todd’s office and decided I’d run some errands on the perfectly dry roads. I noticed a smoginess in the air over the highway. Providence is a very small city; we don’t have smog problems like big cities like LA have. I wondered why the highway looked so smoggy, and then learned why when I entered the smog. The DOT had already salted the highway, and the salt was getting kicked up into the air. Not a flake had fallen, yet there was salt on the road. Again, I chucked at the Rhode Island snow hysteria, and sped along back to the suburbs.

Not even 3 miles down the highway from the smog I encountered a white wall crossing the highway. It had begun snowing, and it was snowing hard. I patted myself on the back for having been grocery shopping and not feeling the need to raid the bread aisle and the dairy case. I laughed at myself for calling it Rhode Island snow hysteria.

I ran my errands, and barely touched the gas pedal as I idled in the traffic near the shopping areas. I watched the perfectly formed snowflakes stick to my windshield for a brief moment before the heat of the defroster melted them and the wipers swished them away so that they could join the slushy frame around the windshield. I looked in at the passengers in the other cars gripping their wheels as they edged along. Their faces were tense, their hands in mittens tapping on the steering wheel.

I turned on the radio and tuned it to the station that had been playing Christmas music since Thanksgiving and dashed through the snow all the way home.