Thursday, December 18, 2008

STAY TUNED FOR AN ALOTT5MA LIST OF SCHOOL CLOSURES: I know it's been cold and snowy in the Northeast, but now we're getting snow in places where it's downright strange. An unusual volume in Seattle, an inch or so on the Strip in Vegas, and even enough in Berkeley the other day for a guy to pretend to cross-country ski for the cameras in Tilden Park (you almost want the snowline to have been a little bit lower just to see if a kid on a tobaggan could break the sound barrier coming down Marin Avenue). When I was a kid in upstate New York I had my share of four-foot blizzards (and the attendant task of digging out the driveway, one made Sisyphean by the plows that would then push all the street snow right back onto your cleared and salted pavement), but my favorite snowstorm was one I heard about only in letters (remember those?) and hushed retellings. In Seattle in 1989 or 1990, after the weatherman predicted a light dusting, a freak storm dropped two or three feet in just a couple of hours. It surprised and paralyzed the city. One woman with whom I worked said it took her 10 hours to get home. People abandoned their cars (and their Metro buses) on the freeway. I think they made a Jake Gyllenhall movie about it.

Any good snowed-in stories out there?

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