Snowpocalypse 2011 — the blizzard that really came
Chicago is literally buried under tons of Global Warming today.
Last night, Boystown looked like a ghost town, with most of the bars and restaurants closed, including places that don’t even close on Christmas or Thanksgiving. Here and there, a few people could be spotted trying to make their way down the streets — they were bent and nearly broken by the cold and weight of the snow, pushed left and right by the wind as they struggled to make their way forward. They looked like zombies in a horror movie shambling about.
What’s most interesting to me today is how no one I knew believed all of this snow was really coming.
That’s because no one I know trusts the Media, especially the sensationalist local news, and the weatherologists thereof, that repeatedly cry BLIZZARD OF THE CENTURY! in advance of approaching storms that normally leave about as deep a dusting as Ally Sheedy’s dandruff in The Breakfast Club.
Because the local news is so terrible, and needs to ring as much panic and doomsday scenario over every story it produces (SQUIRREL INVASION IN GRANT PARK! CRIME SPREE CRIPPLES LAKEVIEW! LOCAL STUDENTS TRAPPED IN FAILING SCHOOL!), people seem to apply an 80/20 rule to whatever the local newscasters say, especially regarding the weather, which is reported on as a sort of masochistic meteorological porn.
I often think of Kathleen Turner reading the phone book and somehow making it sound dirty whenever I catch the local Chicago stations reporting on tomorrow’s weather, because something that should be dry and factual gets punctuated with nonstop exclamation marks in the Media’s effort to captivate viewers…but 80% of the time those dire warnings and doomsday predictions don’t come true.
So, when the SNOWPOCALYPSE really does hit a city like Chicago, we’re actually taken by surprise, because the Media’s cried BLIZZARD! so often in the past that people disregard whatever they say completely. I can’t even count the number of emails and texts I got from friends saying “I didn’t think it would snow this bad” or “I know they said it would be a blizzard, but I didn’t believe them”.
I 100% didn’t believe them either. When I woke up this morning my boyfriend Justin was standing by the window with his mouth agape, stunned by the snow that had fallen all night. Huge dunes of white have buried whole cars. The wind’s swirling and pushing the accumulation across the street like the whole neighborhood was plucked up in the middle of the night and deposited in Antarctica. If you aren’t a penguin or some sort of Yeti-esqque Himalayan abominable something or another, you just shouldn’t leave your home for a few days.
Seriously.
Do you feel this way about your own local news wherever you live?
Are they as sensational, and do they try to make every broadcast as exciting and MUST-SEE! as possible by crying BLIZZARD! when there is none, so that when a blizzard actually comes the net effect is that people ignored the warnings as if there hadn’t been a news broadcast at all…since trust in what the local media says is just so low?
Have you, too, ever been caught off guard by something that really ended up happening because you just thought the media was exaggerating again?
© 2011, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
Also Recommended:
- Looking for an iconic shot of the White House in a winter blizzard, taken of the Truman Balcony side
- New York Public Unions DELIBERATELY fouled blizzard cleanup as ploy to demand more money from taxpayers
- BigGovernment: Charge NY union leaders with negligent homicide for deaths that resulted from their blizzard work slowage/stoppage
- ManBearPig spotted in Capital? Is Global Warming Conference happening? Three feet of snow headed to D.C.
- Have a safe and fun night out – see you on the other side of 2011
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Around here (Texas Panhandle) it’s a little different. Each station (we have 3) always has a different take on things. We kid that they do this on purpose, that way somebody’s always right. One will say it’s going to be a high of 20 with a light dusting, the next will say it’s going to be a high of 25 with 1-3 inches and the next says 22 with 4-6 inches. Well, guess what, if it’s a high of 21 with 5 inches–two of them got it right and one was in range!
This particular storm we didn’t get a lot of snow–1 to 2 inches but it is COLD ENOUGH TO FREEZE A PENGUIN! Got up this morning it was -4!!!! I’ve never seen -4 driving to school. But the only thing I could think was thank God we’re not in Colorado. At my friend’s yesterday the high was -16 with a wind chill of -38.
My favorite is how they try to say this is evidence of global warming. So if it’s hot it’s global warming and if it’s cold it’s global warming. DANG! At this rate I could totally have made a 100% on those stupid science projects I had in school. Either way it proves my hypothesis!
My friend in Boulder says that it’s -12 degrees out right now. Brrrr!
are you complaining about -12 ? That is a heatwave!!
When I lived in Fairborn it reached -28F and the pipes at the local high school burst.
We were not allowed to go outside and they also said we could not light our fires!!
that is not cold, it is a heatwave!!
Trust me, I have a story to prove that point!!
When we lived in Ohio it reached -28F. the coldest day on record in Fairborn at the time.
We’re a bit south of the Panhandle (the temperature was 1 degree this morning), but we have the same experience as you do with the weather predictions. I just use them as a general guideline. We’re different from the rest of the country because our main weather threat is tornadoes and those happen in real time. I know which local TV and radio stations are reliable and tune in to those when we’re under a warning.
i just had a spat via email with a chucklehead who writes a local column here–a libtard—on just this stuff. There is no reporting by and large so why even read it? And it is crafted to carry a message so we cant take it seriously.
Greetings from Groundhog Day in Pennsylvania where Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow – an event that only happens about 1 in 10 years, though the last time was 2007. The “Early Spring” predicted will doubtless be buried under the same heap of global warming you woke up to this morning in Chicago.
My bed & breakfast and cabin rental were filled with guests who traveled over to Punxsy for the festivities and apparently made it in spite of the ice storm last night. (I watch on TV – in spite of living only 34 miles from Gobbler’s Knob, I have never gone over to see the Phil in person!)
To answer your question….yes, I rarely put much stock in weather predictions because they are wrong so often – when they are not wrong it is disconcerting. In this instance what we got was less than we expected from the “monster storm”. It is treacherous outside and all the schools are closed in the region (central PA) but so far roads are open and people are able to get where they need to.
Where I live, the mass hysteria is hurricanes. Each year it will be “the worst year ever for hurricanes! Record numbers of massive hurricanes will strike the US.”
Then as each minor tropical wave blows off Africa, the meteorologists start up, “We’re going to be watching this one!”
We only have one or two weather guys here that are really cool and will say, “OK, that storm is hundreds of miles away and really has nothing to do with us right now, so just relax.”
I just don’t listen to the news anymore. Our newspaper here is so left-leaning, we canceled it during Obama’s campaign to takeover the WH. I get my news online where I can pick sites I trust.
Well in our case, we have just experienced a very bad cyclone… at least to the north of where I live has been smashed by Cyclone Yasi.
I will update when I learn more.
The TV has been sensationalizing the whole flood and cyclone situation.
It’s funny you ask this because being in Florida we are attentive to the weather in the summer because of hurricanes, thunder storms, tornadoes, etc. We have a 24/7 local news channel on our cable network that has “weather on the 1′s”…every 10 minutes :01, :11, :21 etc. Anyway, the head meteorologist on that station is my favorite weather guy. I discovered him during the 04-05 seasons that were so hard on us. I liked him because he was so even-keeled factual and didn’t do a whole lot of Chicken Little type predictions.
A couple of years later, I learned that he is the husband of a co-worker of mine. So I got to meet him at one of our Christmas parties. I told him how much I appreciated his lack of wackiness when talking about the weather and he told me that the station managers have gotten on him about it. It’s all about the ratings and the more drama you insert, the more viewers you get. I told him that was not the case with me. I want someone to calm me down. I have three little girls that provide plenty of drama when they just hear the word “tornado”…I don’t need anything to add to that.
In any case, I tell you one thing…when I’ve seen the pictures of this big snow storm, I am a HAPPY Florida resident today.
It’s a little different in North Carolina too. The weather people are pretty much spot on most of the time. They do make you watch a lot of weather-reporting though…minutes and minutes and minutes of jet stream and upper atmosphere and fronts, before they actually give you the forecast. But yes, we trust the weather reports here. The rest of it – who watches?
San Francisco has had a total of 17.5″ of snow since 1865 or so. I check the weather on line during the winter to see if it’ll rain, but mostly from April through October it’s mostly the same, with some occasional heat in April and October (note, they are 6 mos apart). No rain – maybe a sprinkling or two, but lots of thick, overnight fog so it looks like it did.
It amazes me how many people here think S.F. gets Indian summer with a warm October. San Francisco does not get Indian summer, no matter how warm October, November, or December may be.
For those of who who don’t live in Chicago, Kevin is right.
The local news hits the panic button so often that we Chicagoans are utterly desensitized to any type of alarm.
This is why people stay in the bleachers munching popcorn during ball games when tornado sirens go off, as opposed to, say, moving to a safe location.
Then, when the spit hits the fan, they are shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED, acting as if they have never, ever been through anything this bad, even though the blizzard of ’67 left us with 23 inches of snowfall, along with terrible looting (one young woman was shot for looting) and around 75 people died from heart attacks from snow shoveling. And it had been 65 degrees the day before the snow fell, if you can believe that. (The blizzard of 1918, which almost no one alive can remember, left us with 42 inches of snow and mass death due to starvation and freezing, but history counts for nothing in this city). http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-chicagodays-1967blizzard-story,0,1032940.story
I hate the news for precisely the reasons Kevin names. They can’t speak a single word without indulging in hyperbole and panic attacks. Whatever…
In Buffalo NY, we listened for days to the local media telling us about this huge winter storm that was going to drop 9-18 inches on us. Last night they closed the schools for today (Feb. 2nd). The snow was to start at 10 PM Feb. 1st and the heavy snowfall was start at 1 AM Feb. 2nd.
I woke up this morning at 4:45 AM and guess what? It was a normal winter day in Buffalo. We had maybe 2-5 inches and all the roads were plowed.
NO BIG DEAL – a normal Buffalo winter day. All businesses are open. But all the schools are closed. So it was actually a faster drive to work today without all the school traffic!
The weather media really has to be held accountable for scaring the public.
Since I am older than dirt, I remember the hysteria that would hit every year after the Great Midwest Blizzard of 1978. That blizzard hit with no warning, and the weather guys spent a lot of time explaining why they didn’t predict it.
For about 10 years afterwards, until the mid-80′s, every time it looked like we were going to have a lot of snow they would flash “BLIZZARD WARNING” on the TV. My husband said he thought this was funded by the local grocery stores, so that people would run out and buy stuff.
They finally quit scaring us with the blizzard stuff since they now have the fancy radar, so now they just come on and show us what is happening in Peoria and St. Louis and where it’s heading.
The blizzard that I experienced in March 1985 in Fairborn Ohio also struck without warning.
I was on the road when the snow began, and so was my husband.
Yes, I admit that I had a difficult time in the car, and getting home… but that is inexperience with such conditions for ya!!
On the edge of Amish country (south-central Pa., about 50 miles from Filthy), the best forecasters are on the AccuWeather Channel, which is a digital subchannel of Channel 69 in Allentown available on my (not Comcast) cable system. The meteorologists don’t overhype… or underhype. And they’ve been quite accurate. On the other hand, the Philly stations are the kings of weatherhype. And don’t get me started about the global warming alarmist mindset of the Weather Channel.
I believed in the coming of the Snowpocalypse, but many of the people around didn’t. “You really believe it’s going to happen?” Yes. I don’t always, but all of the models and forecasters seemed to be in agreement that this was going to be epic, and in fact, it was. We’ve got about a foot, major wind and drifting, and it’s supposed to be -10 tonight. And, my city has about 200,000 people and something like 13 snowplows. This stuff’s gonna be here till June. And, it’s supposed to snow again Sunday/Monday. I love that God has a sense of humor that seems to be at the specific expense of Al Gore.
It’s hit-and-miss here in Utah. Just this past November, all the weather people were predicting MASS PANIC AND HYSTERIA AND THE END OF THE WORLD OMG a week or so before Thanksgiving. People in Salt Lake and Provo were being interviewed and freaking out about the impending storm and the news channels had experts in to talk about what people could do to prepare (which is good advice in any situation, I guess).
Well, the storm came, lasted about 45 minutes and totally blew over by bedtime. Everyone made it to Grandma’s house for the holiday with no more than usual incident. I couldn’t help but laugh at everybody (of course, I live in a rural area of Utah, so we have a different mindset with regard to huge storms than people in the city).
Another Chicago-land buzzer here. We didn’t believe for one minute that we were getting all this snow. Everyone has been running around like it’s Y2K all over again. But we have 2 feet of snow outside now, so I guess they got this one right this time.
only 2ft of snow?
That is nothing!! The blizzard in Fairborn left us with a bank of snow that was about 4ft outside the garage doors.
In my neck of the woods we are quite accustomed to significant snowfall throughout winter, so I don’t think any of us were too concerned about this one. I was rather hoping for a good shellacking nonetheless. It ended up fizzling out once it reached here, but the university I teach at canceled classes the night before so I got a snowday out of the deal anyway. I’m enjoying the extra downtime! I do feel bad for the places that were hit with this thing, especially those who got the ice.
My local newspaper tries to sensationalize our news, but between the fact that the most noteworthy news items usually involve school plays or a particularly contentious city council meeting and the fact that they get around to reporting things two days after they happen, their efforts usually fall flat.
Driving home to the burbs from Chicago that night in that mess was the single craziest driving moment of my life. Whiteout conditions, cars stranded everywhere, tailgating a semi to stay in his tracks,exits blocked due to non plowing, and the end of the highway was CLOSED so we had to turn around, go the wrong way down the highway, and exit an on ramp that happened to be plowed. But we not only made it back in one piece, we made it to the driveway (and had to shovel half a block of knee high snow drifts to do it). Not to mention the thundersnow. Epic.Can’t wait to go play in it!
Thank God you got home okay.
I seriously would have had a nervous breakdown…if my kids were in the car even more so! That freaks me out!
Now that is a freaky story. Sorry to hear that you went through that.
When it happened to us, my husband did the 180 degree turn at the traffic lights. He had taken a friend and fellow student home to Beaver Creek before coming home.
I remember sliding about on the road as well. It was scary and that was at the beginning of the blizzard.
Please be careful.
Ditto on the press in Chicago. They are hopeless. I am shocked that they have any veiwership at all. It is VERY leftist. Does anyone here really know/understand all the tv/radio ratings. Trib, Sun times and all the TV and Radio are all left.
As for conditions on the ground as of now…I live near Kevin on the Lakefront. It is still really snowing, so that radar map on Weather channel isn’t quite perfect. Lake Shore Drive is still closed and they are still towing cars off the drive. Our neighbor was stuck in the Lake Shore Drive problems last night. He finally made it to a hotel, but is not home yet.
Here in Springfield MO the local stations do the weather good with little hype – that is the real reason anyone watches the local stations anymore anyway. The stations here cover all of SW Missouri and NW Arkansas. Being where we are, the weather is widely varied between areas of the TV stations coverage area. The Weathermen all do pretty good on covering it rationally and accurately, The news part of the stations are the ones that go way over board on it all; but the weathermen themselves are great. The news people are the ones that call it the worst of the worst every time. The reporters sit on the station parking lots or a few blocks away and talk about how bad it is – not really getting out too much. The political slant on most of the stations here is what is bad. The news departments have lost a lot of credibility and people only watch the local news for the weather anymore.
I’m in Springfield too!
The question is this: Is there more snow in Chicago this morning than there was in the snow storm of 67? I do not think anyone was expecting that storm either and that was back before the 68 convention and the great awakening of the perfidy of the MFM. The weatherman was trusted to have the word direct from above.
I for one didn’t believe the media because Kevin is right, all they do is hype the weather up. That’s why I think so many people took Lake Shore Drive and got stranded last night.
They got it right. For once.
Here in Omaha, we got hit with about 6 inches of snow, pretty close to what most media outlets were predicting. But there was a lot of wind, the snow was very dry and so we had near blizzard conditions, which was also predicted. On the other hand, I have been saying that the local weather forecasters need a new ouiji board for years because the spirit in the current one is demonstrably too old and worn down for the job.
It isn’t so much the weather doomsaying that drives me nuts with the local news channels; it’s the disaster du jour. At least twice a week, one of the local stations drums up hysteria about “lurking dangers that no one knows about” — whether it’s financial or medical. They can turn store-bought broccolli into a would-be medical disaster of epic proportions. And for two days in advance, the station hypes it by saying something to the effect of: What you don’t know about broccoli can kill you or possibly harm your kids.GACK!!!!!!
Yes, the same here on the “lurking dangers”. I always put it into the “telling us how to live” category.
The stations here have story after story on “what we all need to do”. In the case of “killer broccoli – we need to wash it before eating it (always it is common sense that wins the day).These are pre-wrote and cheap to make filler for their newscasts. The stories change with the seasons. Christmas brings it’s shopping “hints”. Tornado season brings “storm safety” stories and repeated “what-to-do” items like lie in a ditch. Winter brings “do not shovel snow if you have heart problems” stories.
It is all common sense stuff that they can preach at us “that they know something smart”.
Here in Portland, OR we know that the hysteria has started when they stop all regular programming and do a “Storm Tracker Alert”. They send reporters out into the weather to give live updates. The two iconic sites for weather people are the Sylvan Hill overpass, and Troutdale. The sylvan hill overpass is at about 1000 feet, and Troutdale is at the mouth of the Columbia Gorge (cold east wind).
We get to see the reporters freezing and sliding and trying their darndest to whip up the fear. The thing is, here in the NW, especially on the west side of the Cascades, freezing cold weather doesn’t ever last very long. The warm onshore flow from the Pacific sees to that. I guess they have to panic while they can.
Everything about local TV news is driven by consultants who specialize in boosting ratings. EVERYTHING. From the gender, age, haircolor and ethnicity of the actors (I mean, anchors) to their clothing, to the color of the sets, to the length of “news packages,” to the voiceovers. There’s an old saying in TV news: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Carnage and trauma go to the head of the line in TV news. And the weather department, which used to be pretty boring in the pre-Doppler days, is no exception.
My family and I started making fun of the Chicken Little “Storm Team Seven” type of weather anchors years ago. I started referring to snow as “White Death” because that’s how it was treated on the local news–as if powdered arsenic were falling from the sky.
So far in the past 36 hours, we’ve had about 3/4 of an inch of Freezing Death (ice) and maybe an inch of White Death. It is bad. I’m trapped in my house (my car is literally frozen onto the driveway). I’ve lost several major tree limbs and some whole trees on my block have just been turned into splinters.
But after being without electricity for 9 days after the remnants of Hurricane Ike hit us, I’m well prepared with a hand-crank radio, oil lamps, camping gear, etc. The car is gassed up, I have an inverter in the car that I can use to recharge my cell phone, and I have an old-fashioned non-electric handset for the land line. (Yes, I’d have to chip my way into the car, but still.) I have a lot of food. I have a cooler full of ice in case the electricity goes out. (Leaving food outside would draw varmints).
So, I’m good to go, but I always am, because of Hurricane Ike.
And no, I didn’t believe the weatherguys either. But I’m glad I went to the grocery “just in case.”
One of the Albuquerque forecasters has an interesting way of presenting the storms that are headed to town. He’ll say where it is now, when it’s expected in ABQ, and then gives a “bust potential” for the storm; to indicate the likelihood of it behaving as promised. He’s pretty accurate; when the bust potential is 10%, you’d better prepare. Sometimes the bust potential is 75%, so who cares about that storm.
Two gripes about news shows — they’re always telling us, “You WON’T BELIEVE what we’re about to tell you!” (Really? Then don’t waste my time). Secondly, the local news always has to find a local angle to any big story. A volcano erupts and people are killed. One of the victims was the cousin of a local man. Or, one of the victims went to a local elementary school. Or, one of the victims had traveled to our city just last year!
And let’s not even get into the cute animal stories that are required to end the show.
Here in Cleveland, we call one local news outlet the “hype and panic” weather channel. It’s the local ABC channel. The Fox channel covers weather, but always uses the caveat – “this is what the models show; it may not turn out this way, so just keep up to date and things may change,” which is correct. But most outlets like the ABC, don’t want people to think they have no clue what will happen – they want us to believe they are omnipotent. I think that’s the reasoning behind the hype. Good weathermen and women say up front – we have an idea, but don’t hold us to the details. Weather prediction is still difficult.
Early this morning, L.A. TV news teams descended on LAX intent on scaring anybody hoping to catch a plane headed east with harrowing tales of The Blizzard of the Century. (They’re trying to frighten us locals with forecasts of 75 mph winds. But when I arrived @ work at 6:30 a.m., there wasn’t enough breeze to muss my hair, much less launch a kite. Still isn’t at noon.)
Now, it simply wasn’t all that cold here this morning — 56 degrees at 5 a.m. — downright balmy compared to many areas of the country — yet our beloved news geeks appeared on camera in heavy coats, knit hats, scarves and gloves looking like extras in a scene from “Dumb & Dumber.” Pathetic.
About six years ago, all three Indianapolis stations were in a hot panic for three days predicting a blizzard. The ABC affiliate even stationed a reporter on an interstate overpass to wait for the storm (one of his broadcasts consisted of him pointing at a snowflake falling, shouting, “Here it comes”) – which never happened. The storm fizzled out as it traveled east, and Indy got about 1/2 inch.
Yes, yes and yes! In the Puget Sound area we get pelted by “look out the weather is going to kill us all” reports constantly. And the stations always “brand” their reports with “Arctic Blast” or “Killer Wind” labels. It’s sooo lame.
Sometimes they actually get it right, most times its overblown hooey.
My favorite the sky-is-falling hype was a few years ago when the local ABC station broke into programming with a “special report” on a Lahar. In case you don’t know a Lahar is a mud and debris slide caused by volcanic activity. Lahars usually flow down a river bed. There had apparently been a *very small* mud flow reported in a rural area south of Mt. Rainier and the station was hyping it up making it seem like the entire region would be Pompeii-ized by morning.
As an actual meteorologist, I don’t much listen to the presenters, unless they have shown to be reliable, or if I’m looking for cheap laughs.
Your nightly news weather person should be both knowledgable and skilled at presenting the weather, especially in a big market like Chicago.
When push comes to shove, look up your local National Weather Service forecast, and when they use terms like “blizzard” they’re talking about a specific definition, not a tasty treat from DQ:
Blizzard Warning – Sustained winds or frequent gusts of 35 mph or greater, considerable falling and/or blowing snow reducing visibility frequently to 1/4 mile or less for a period of three hours or more. There are no temperature criteria in the definition of a blizzard but freezing temperatures and 35 mph winds will create sub-zero wind chills.
Source: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lot/severe/wxterms.php#ww
Keep in mind, it is hard to beat the models in the 48 hour forecast. They’re usually pretty close.
Kevin, you just about made me pee my pants!!! And YES!!!! I feel that way about my local news here in Orlando Florida. The “weather people” act as though they are doing an Indian rain dance in the parking lot, and they are personally responsible for bringing you the weather. Thunderstorm coming through, be prepared to have your whole day of TV interrupted for Urgent Updates with every possible view from every possible radar ever created. Don’t even get me started on Hurricane season. Those guys LIVE to interrupt your shows. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but my hubby sure gets bent out of shape.
It’s that way here in Fort Worth (we’re NOT Dallas!) too. Of course, we mainly get ice and very little snow. They’d been predicting this for at least a week with the Super Bowl coming up, and sure ‘nuf, they got it right this time. Right around here in the Fort Worth-Dallas area, it’s really freaky how the weather will come right up to us and then fizzle out. But yes, any kind of severe thunderstorm or winter storm, they have full-day coverage with those poor reporters out in it freezing their butts off to tell us it’s cold outside. Then all the people get ticked because they’re missing “their shows”.
It’s really funny when there are severe storms and a few tornadoes around. People would call up griping saying they didn’t care about the tornado, that it wasn’t near them, so quit interrupting the programming. So as a result, reports would only come on during commercial breaks after you were blown off the map.
I’m glad I took them at their word this time and hit the grocery store Sun. This blew in full force late Monday night. I’ve been here since then (unheard of for me) and the way the streets are, looks like it’s gonna be awhile longer still. Even the highways are still in really bad shape. They’ve called in sand trucks from all over the state because of the SB, but we’re not supposed to get above freezing until Sat, and that’s after it’s supposed to snow again Fri.
It’s the small businesses I feel sorry for that got all ready for the SB crowd. Now if Jerry Jones gets screwed by all this, well, I’ll just say it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy! ;o)
They’re having to do rolling blackouts around here (so far I’ve been spared). But everyone’s really po’d that Cowboy Stadium, the one place that comsumes more electricity than anyone else in the state, is exempt. Claims for security reasons.
We hold our huge rodeo and stock show each year from mid Jan – first weekend of Feb and the weather seems to always get bad, to where everyone just calls it “Stock Show Weather”
The good thing of being stuck at home is that I’m actually doing some cooking (yes, that’s why you felt the earth tremble) and might get this place cleaned up!
Nah! But I do love that hot Dr Pepper with lemon and hot chocolate with just a bit of kahlua – and marshmallows, of course!
Stay warm, all!
Chicagoan here: My husband reminded me of Opening Day for the White Sox two years ago: There was a storm, maybe with hail on that day, and the game ended up being cancelled. What happened? Sun was shining by the time that the game would’ve begun. Mark Buerhle was sooooo upset in an interview. He mentioned Tom (“The Turtle” — seriously, he looks like a turtle) Skilling specifically, calling him an alarmist who was basically predicting 5 pound chunks of hail falling from the sky. Priceless!