In anticipation of what is likely to be our first real snow of the winter tonight and tomorrow, I’m remembering a visit from a very nasty lady exactly a year ago . . .
My usual reaction as a seasoned New Englander to panicked reports of the next big “Snowpocalypse” event coming our way is “whatever.” So when I heard on the local NPR weather update last Saturday as it snowed a couple of sloppy inches that a
“MAJOR SNOW EVENT” was coming our way late Monday night into Tuesday, I took it with several grains of salt. How many times in my life have the prognosticators predicted a “historic weather event,” only to have it embarrassingly fizzle into little or nothing when the appointed time comes? Except, of course, that weather experts appear to be immune to embarrassment or even the ability to say “we were wrong.” They just keep on predicting the worst in the blind hope that sometime they might actually be right.
But a few things indicated that this time might be different. First, the predictions from various venues were remarkably similar (I heard later that this is because they were using a new model—the American model—for the first time rather than the usual European one. Makes sense). It will start on Monday night, go straight through Tuesday, the wind will be 40-50 miles per hour, 18-24 inches are predicted, and the Providence-Boston area is the bull’s-eye. No waffling, no saying that “the amounts will range from one inch to fifty depending on how the storm tracks,” no qualifications such as “it might turn out to be all rain.” Just “you’re in for a serious weather ass-kicking, Providence.” 
Second, although I despise the Weather Channel’s insistence that even the most minor weather event must be named, I took notice when I heard that the impending storm had been named Juno. The late January storm last year, named Janus, was bad enough. But everyone knows that Juno/Hera was a bitch. She was manipulative, nasty, arbitrary, and generally not easy to get along with. I know, the fact that her husband Jupiter/Zeus was a serial cheater who slept at the drop of a hat with semi-divine and mortal women in forms ranging from a swan or bull to a shower of gold probably helps explain Juno/Hera’s general bad attitude. But maybe Jupiter/Zeus’ straying activities had something to do with the fact that he couldn’t stand being around his wife. Just saying.
For a teacher, especially early in a new semester, rumored weather cancellations of classes are a pain in the ass. Just as the students do, the faculty claims to be excited about the prospect of an unexpected “day off”—on Sunday I posted on Facebook that I was thoroughly annoyed that the promised storm was coming Monday night through Tuesday. 
Given that Tuesday is the day this semester that I am not in class, I wanted to know why the storm couldn’t be scheduled for Wednesday, by far my heaviest teaching day of the week. What is the point of cancelled classes on a day when I have no classes? But in truth, what I was really worried about was that if Juno turned out to be as bad-ass as predicted, the odds were high that both Tuesday and Wednesday classes would be cancelled. As I chatted with colleagues Monday about the incoming weather event, we privately agreed that having to retool and revise the syllabus in the wake of cancelled classes was a far greater pain than any benefit received from getting to sleep an extra hour or two because of a snow day. I much prefer snow events on the weekend (except when they cancel church on a Sunday that I am scheduled to play the organ—this happened once last winter). In short, people need to check with me before they plan unusual weather.
Jeanne and I decided to park our car in the underground parking lot on campus to spare our Hyundai Eva (named after Adolf Hitler’s girlfriend—a long story) getting snowed and blown on and us the annoyance of digging her out of six-foot drifts. The snow started late Monday afternoon, intensified in the evening, hit hard in the middle of the night, and was going strong when I woke up at my usual 5:15—just as the prognosticators said it would. 
Good for them—even a broken clock is right twice every twenty-four hours. Looking out the window I was reminded of my days in Laramie in the eighties where it the wind was so strong during a winter storm that it snowed sideways. It was impossible to tell how much it had actually snowed; due to drifting we had received anywhere from nothing to five feet of the stuff, depending on where I looked. I know from growing up in Vermont that one should never wait until a storm ends to start shoveling—better to shovel 6-8 inches several times than three feet once. But not this time—trying to shovel while Juno was still in Rhode Island would have been as effective as spitting into a hurricane.
On Tuesday I watched the drifts pile higher and higher, particularly amused when I discovered that there were two feet of snow drifted tight against the back door as well as a larger four- or five-foot drift between that door and the snow shovels six feet away that we had wisely moved from the garage to the back patio to make them easy to grab when the storm was over. This happened at about the same time I learned that classes were also cancelled for Wednesday, throwing all three of my syllabi into complete disarray. And who said that living in New England during the winter is not fun? Jeanne and I did zero shoveling on Tuesday, watched episodes four through nine of Season Five of Downton Abbey (we got the whole thing in DVD a couple of days ago because Jeanne started throwing a few monthly bucks WGBH-PBS’s way a few weeks ago), I drank Balvenie, and we slept well.
Wednesday was less fun because the snow shoveling staff failed to show up and we had to do it ourselves. According to a Facebook acquaintance the official snowfall in Providence from Juno was 19.5 inches (and we know that Facebook is always right), but because of tightly packed three- to four-foot drifts from top to bottom of our driveway, it shoveled like a lot more. With impeccable timing, just as we were close to finished our neighbor Al, with whom we share a driveway, said that he was going to be borrowing a friend’s snowblower and would have been happy to do our side with it. 
Actually Al’s a sweetheart and came back with it in time to blow out the end of our drive where the plow had deposited five feet worth of cement-heavy material. Later today I’ll be retrieving our car from the campus lot and parking it in our shoveled driveway just in time for the plow to pile a few feet more of snow in the end as it makes a sweep pushing the banks back in the middle of the night.
Strangely enough, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love New England, including the storms, and snow emergencies bring out the Good Samaritan best in everyone. Al cleared out the end of our driveway, we kicked in $10 to some enterprising youngsters to shovel out our neighbor across the street when she didn’t have enough cash on hand, and everyone is in a “pay it forward” mood. Except the fool who blew his horn impatiently for ten minutes as he sat behind an oil truck delivering oil to our elderly neighbor on the other side whose tank had run dry. I hope Winter Storm Javier dumps five feet on him next January.
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