Ian and I left work Thursday knowing there was a good chance we would be working from home Friday. A snow storm was coming.
People make fun of the south a lot for closing schools and clamoring to the grocery stores the few times a weatherman might predict snow here, and I’ll admit I used to scoff, too, when I first lived here. But then I experienced my first southern snow storm.
It ain’t like it was back home, folks.
You see, in the south, we get ice. Our entire roads turn to sheets of ice, and then the snow falls, lightly, covering the ice. Salt is only effective to a certain temperature, and in the south the temperature drops quickly.
And I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, how many feet of snow you walked to school in when you were a kid — up a hill both ways, of course — nobody can drive on ice. Nobody.
Also? We have hills around here. Big, winding, dramatic hills that don’t think twice about throwing you over the side even when the weather is gorgeous. So schools are closed because it’s not worth tossing a bussload of kids off the side of one of those hills.
I can’t explain the grocery store runs, though. Sure, I can understand why you would want to stock up on food, seeing as how we really don’t have many plows around here (and why should we — it only shows enough to use them maybe once every couple years). But why, if you think you’re going to be trapped in your house for days, do you insist on buying milk, bread and eggs — the most perishable items in the store?
And this picture? It’s from when Ian and I took a lunch break to walk down the block to a local hotdog place to grab lunch. We’re one of the few who don’t make the last-minute dash to the grocery store when we hear snow is coming: We live less than a block from a gas station, a grocery store, a hotdog restaurant and a liquor store.
I’d say as long as we can get out the front door, we’ll be just fine.
