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MossColumn: 12 thoughts about the Siberian Express

Twelve observations about the Arctic blast of 2015:

 

  • We're unaccustomed to regular hardship. People found the week exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. After the storm dropped snow and ice on us Monday afternoon and overnight, we woke to an icy winter carpet. Life in the next few days depended on three factors: The gradient of your driveway. Whether your neighborhood road was scraped. The kindness of neighbors, coworkers and strangers.
  • For 360 days of the year I do not sit around wishing I owned a snowplow and a heavy-duty pickup truck. For the past five days I've admired the snowplow drivers and envied their business position. It's a license to print money — and I imagine close to 100 percent cash market. Some do gouge but most are honest hardworking operators, and this week many worked 18-hour days in brutal cold.
  • Talk about supply and demand. Suddenly ice melt and snow shovels were prominently positioned in the front of stores. At Ace hardware, owner Greg Paul personally directed traffic. As customers walked in, they made an immediate right to reach the ice melt and snow shovels. Soon, Greg had to open a second register. At Louis Williams & Sons in East Flat Rock, Danny Williams made it even easier. He left the pallet of 50-pound sacks of ice melt on the driveway. Back up the car, go inside and pay, load and go. Danny himself helped with the heavy lifting.
  • "Winter mix" is forecaster shorthand when something frozen falls from the sky. The concoction of freezing rain, sleet and snow was exactly that, and it had characteristics of all of its components. It was pretty to look at, if you didn't have to get out. It was tempting for the sledding set, but made for a dangerously fast and unsteerable track. It was hell to shovel. It was a symphony of pain and pleasure.
  • The so-called Siberian Express brought us a surface that mocked our fancy all-wheel-drive readiness. We heard of Jeeps and saw plenty of SUVs that had tried and failed to gain purchase on the slickest of slippery slopes.
  • School's out — forever! It was a week that Alice Cooper would have loved. When I saw the ground Tuesday and read the forecast for Wednesday and Thursday night, I predicted school's out for the week — and that was before knowing that Friday had already been chalked in as a teacher workday. "Buses don't run on icy roads," the snow-day deciders always tell us. Cars don't either. You can't judge this kind of snow event by conditions on the major roads. Through Friday afternoon, many people — thousands I would guess — could still not get out on their own, and I doubt schools have managed to make sidewalks safely walkable even now.
  • As in crime rates and gas prices, "depends on where you live" was never more true. If you had straight, flat access to a major U.S. or N.C. highway (and ignored the fact that three-quarters of your coworkers were missing) you might have wondered what the fuss was about. The snowplow crews did an excellent job on the higher priority roads in the city and county. Get off those and ... not so much. But for a snow event of this duration, a motor pool the size of Boston's would be needed — and Boston can't spare a single plow this month. By Thursday, our roads were white with dried brine and our cars were covered with the post-war grime.
  • For 360 days of the year I do not sit around wishing I owned a carwash. By mid-week, I'm thinking, now that's the business to be in. It's feast or famine, isn't it? For long stretches, I see carwashes open but sitting idle. For the next week, the proprietor will be a pig in slop.
  • Although production ground to a crawl, it was a good week to reach people in high places. They were there but had little to do. "Sure, come on in," one administrator told me on Thursday. "Everything on my calendar is canceled."
  • The weather folk got it right. So often we hear the weather showmen come on TV and hype an approaching snowstorm like it's the plagues of Egypt as we settle in and enjoy scenes 24 hours later of cars sliding around in Madison County. This time the forecasters should have been playing Vegas. They nailed the initial snow in arrival time and magnitude, and they nailed the lows. Winds were not as high as predicted and that was a blessing.
  • Once I got over the startling thrill ride of falling on my butt trying to descend my driveway, I chiseled a footpath so we could get up and down. My labor was nothing compared to what other people endured. Many could not get out at all. Whole neighborhoods remained iced in through Saturday. Houses up switchback roads that remained unplowed had to be inaccessible by all but the best equipped snow vehicles piloted by the most intrepid of drivers.
  • I spent the week feeling blessed. Our forebears lived with hardship like this every day of their lives, except they didn't know it was hardship. It was regular life. We were lucky that the ice and wind did not combine to deliver massive power outages, which, given the cold and inability to evacuate, would have created truly life-threatening conditions. Bone-chilling cold and persistent snowstorms are regular occurrences in many parts of the country. I'm glad I don't live in one of them. Thank goodness we're in the South. No matter how cold it gets, we can always see spring from here.