Well, here we are buried under 36 inches of scattered snow flurries. At least that's what they were originally supposed to be. However, as the days have progressed the flurries have been scattered into rather large piles and life in the big city has become more and more like an illustrated version of Nanook of the North.
By the time people realized that weathermen had made another in a never-ending series of tragic errors, they were already snowed into their homes. Due to the tendency of human nature to panic in the face of adversity, everyone immediately anticipated the worst. Ignoring the pleas of city officials to stay off streets, hysterical mothers fought their way into grocery stores as if their children were on the point of starvation. Starvation to children only means running out of Bosco, but mothers bought four and five gallons of milk along with numerous loaves of bread in order to prepare for hibernation.
To the fathers was left the fun task of clearing the six-foot drifts so that they could get their cars all the way up the driveway to the impassable street. And just as soon as the driveway was cleared, those helpful civil servants would come along and shove all the snow from the street into the driveway. This necessitated a rerun of earlier removal projects and a generally unkind feeling toward the plows.
School students of all ages were glued to the radio for news of school closings. When any definite information was received, phones rang with the happy news that educational progress was once again to be delayed.
And for a great deal of the calamity caused by the great snow, we owe our thanks to the weathermen. They have repeatedly said that they cannot be exactly sure of the depth of snow falls. However, light snow does not mean 36 inches and scattered flurries has no connotations of a blizzard.
Had we been only slightly forewarned of the impending disaster, some preparations could have been made to avoid public panic. But, the weathermen were unable to see just how erroneous their reports were until it was too late.
One indignant suburban woman called in to a television forecaster to say, "I just wanted to tell you I've shoveled three inches of your partly cloudy off the back porch."