Blizzard Anyone??

When ever the word blizzard is spoken, a picture of a very sweet and cold dessert comes to my mind. I would definitely accept a blizzard if offered for free. But, as it turned out this past weekend, there is one free blizzard that I think the whole city would decline to accept. The unfortunate fact is, it is not for the city or for anyone to accept or not. All we get is a fair warning which is better than being surprised and caught unaware. So, we had the privilege to experience a full category Blizzard starting the afternoon of Saturday, lasted through the night and the whole day of Sunday. The consolation was that it happened during the week end when most people were at home. Nevertheless, it wrecked all plans of Christmas shopping (that includes me). I’m not that upset though because I was able to sneak some shopping on the morning of Saturday before all mayhem started. I'll reserve that topic for my next blog (so excited about it, I can't wait to share).

That storm has put the meaning of the term blizzard into a whole new perspective for me. According to Wikipedia, a winter storm should have winds of 40 km/h (25 mph) or more, have snow or blowing snow, visibility less than 1 km (about 5⁄8 mile), a wind chill of less than −25 °C (−13 °F), and that all of these conditions must last for 4 hours or more before the storm can be properly called a blizzard. All of those characteristics were present during the two day storm.

Monday paper has captured everything. Was it devastating? How many died?? Was it like a super typhoon in the Philippines? Death is a serious outcome of any calamity. Back home or anywhere else it is one of the ways to asses severity of any tragedy. But I guess preparation and timing goes along long way. We knew the storm is coming, we were prepared and we knew what to do. We stayed home and simply let nature do her thing. There were however a lot of inconveniences. Everyone needs to shovel all the accumulated snow on doorways and walkways. No one can drive through this storm. Everyone who did not prepare and underestimated the storm got stranded in the middle of the road. Cars who braved the outside met chaos. There were 800 car accidents within the duration of the storm. No wonder car insurance is so expensive in this country. And yes, there was a single incident of death. A snow plow truck hit a parked car and killed a woman.

How about us? We were warm and cozy inside cleaning house and watching movies. We did try to go out and see if the kids could go tobogganing. Only to find out that nature was in fury. Snow is blowing everywhere, temperature is too cold to tolerate and it was so hard to walk through knee deep snow. We ended up going back after 10 minutes!

I would definitely think twice when asked if I like to have a blizzard.