When I was a kid, it snowed in the winter.

Yep, it did.

The snow would come down, we would shovel it out of the driveway and walkways, and then, over time, it would melt.

Happened that way every time.

The only thing that changed was the amount that accumulated.

Sometimes school was cancelled, with the Humpty Dumpty Day school being the last on the list. If the person on TV or the radio who was reading the cancellation list got to that school, and yours had not been mentioned, you knew you had school.

The depth of the snow varied. Sometimes it was just deep enough to be annoying, while at other times it was deep enough that the snow banks left at the end of the driveway by the snow plows whose operators somehow knew you had just reached the street were taller than the man who lived across the street from us.

And he was tall.

The snow fell, you shoveled it, and life went on. No big deal.

Then the Blizzard of ’78 happened.

Before the snow began falling, the weathermen on the television had been saying that it would be a light dusting; nothing to be concerned about.

Don Kent, an original Boston weatherman, who had moved from radio to television in its early days, and who had been developing a reputation of being rarely correct, was the only one who said the snow would come fast and deep, and would not be the light dusting being predicted.

He was the local Cassandra who, while being ignored, would turn out to be correct, but his reputation had people ignoring him.

Life the day of the storm in ’78 went on as if it would just be a regular snow event.

I was the teachers’ union representative at the school where I taught at the time, and having gone out to my car get something I needed, and seeing how far up on my car’s wheels the snow had accumulated in a very short time, I went to the principal and suggested he consider speaking with the superintendent about a possible early dismissal.

They held to the dusting prediction, and took no action.

By the time school did let out, the snow made it difficult for the buses to get the kids home and for the faculty to drive home. As if to punish him for his bad decision, the storm forced the superintendent to have to stay at a warehouse for a few days since the roads to his home were not going to get plowed for a while.

Soon the Eastern end of the state was brought to a standstill as cars on highways and other major roads were unable to move, stopping traffic and preventing plows from being able to do what plows do.

Had people left school and work earlier in the storm, people would have been safely where they should have been, and the roads would have been clear enough to deal with.
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As it was, cars began forming little blockades like on  Parcheesi board, as cars began to stall and the cars behind them couldn’t get by.

A series of unrelated things turned what should have been something that could have been handled into a total mess that led to a three week period where travel was banned so as to leave room on the roads to allow for emergency vehicles and essential services to get done.

Grocery stores could not be reached, and their parking lots could not be plowed anyway because of all the cars stranded in them. Hard to plow roads limited delivery trucks from restocking shelves.

Food became scarce, and towns had to establish ways to ration out essentials like bread and milk to their citizens.

In my town, if you could get to the town hall, you were given a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, and a dozen eggs that were supposed to last until you neighborhood’s turn came up again in a few days. With nothing to do and no way to drive anywhere, your whole day could consist of walking to and from town hall.

Don Kent had been correct, but he had been ignored.

Ever since then, there has not been one normal snow storm.

Well, actually, the storms might be normal, but the reaction of people as a storm approached certainly hasn’t been. Every snow storm is a Snowmegeddn, and the warnings that used to only be given at local news broadcast times now come on every few minutes, it seems, complete with dramatic music, garish graphics, ominous names, and hyperbolic descriptions.

Since 1978, every storm is the storm of the century, the one that will destroy lives and property, wash whole coastal areas out to sea, as if ocean storms do not usually do that, and necessitate the purchase of yet another snow shovel and more bread and milk than anyone will ever need from the time the snow begins falling and stores can be gotten to.

The problem is that as each storm peters out, people become progressively more lax about the dangers of the next one, the one that could actually be the one that people should pay more attention to.

But, if every storm is going to be the worst one ever, the worst becomes normal, and people will become complacent and remain unprepared.

The weathermen need to pull it back a little and only get all end-of-the-world-ish when it is definitely going to be a storm people should be ready for.

In my time in Oklahoma there were certain times of the year that tornadoes were expected. But, too many times the weather people would interrupt regularly scheduled programming to tell people on one side of the state that it was raining way over in the panhandle on the other side in a town that might have a cow, a bison, and someone who lives by himself with his dog because he doesn’t like living near other people.

This was done so often that when it was actually very necessary to prepare for the worst, most people stayed blasé about it all and their houses got blown away with them in them.

Perhaps these prognosticators of rain and snow should realize that theirs is not a dramatic job that has to rake in an audience. I don’t think any weathermen have fan clubs or get Emmies for best weather forecast.

The need to be first to inform has become a competition to say the most about the least before the other guy does.

If every storm is going to be catastrophic; every storm the worst ever; and every storm will cripple the country, then we will not know which one will actually be the one.

And, when the storm ends and Snowmageddon turns out to be just a few inconvenient inches, the one we should actually pay attention to will go ignored, and that is when the catastrophes will happen.

Take it down a notch.  Please.