As long time readers know, I live in the southeast, which just got hit by a major snowstorm. In the particular area I live in, this is the third highest snowfall on record and the highest since 1988 (23 years). The snow came in Sunday evening, and everything’s been pretty much shut down since then. Yes, you Yankees and other northerners will laugh at us for being unprepared. But really, it doesn’t make sense to be much more prepared than we are. We get snow enough to close roads about once every 5 years or so, it’s really just not worth the cost to be prepared for that. It’s easier and more efficient to just give everybody a holiday for a few days while we get the streets cleaned up.
As of this afternoon, most of the major roads have been plowed off and reopened. A lot of the back roads are still a mess, but if you can carefully make your way out of that, everything’s fine. I discovered this when I left this afternoon to go grocery shopping. We debated making a trip Sunday afternoon, but I made the wrong call. I seriously underestimated how much food we had in the house (I thought our last shopping trip had been much more recent than it actually turned out to be). Anyway, I made the trip solo today. We didn’t really know how the roads were, and I felt better leaving the kid at home until we knew. Also, my wife and I agreed that I had a lot more experience driving in the snow than she did, so it was probably safer that way.
Interesting note: at the grocery store today, it was about 80-90% men, and most of the women were there with men. Typically, as most of you have probably noticed, the ratio is more like 60-70% women at the grocery store, or closer to 50-50 in areas that are heavy on the singles (like college towns).
I’m not saying I think this is a problem. In fact, from an evolutionary perspective it makes an awful lot of sense. I only note that even in our modern, “progressive” society, when we need something done that we perceive as dangerous we send out the men.
