If you go to Environment Canada's website right now, at 7:30 p.m. EST, and click on "watches and warnings" and then select anywhere through much of southern Ontario, you'll find we are in fact under a weather warning.
A "snowfall warning".
Not a blizzard warning. Not even a heavy snowfall warning. Just a snowfall warning, as in "Warning! White flakes are going to fall out of the sky! Take cover!"
The local radio station's in STORM CENTER mode; the Weather Network's got STORMWATCH in heavy rotation. All for six measly inches of snow, falling over a period of many hours. There's not even a wind to reduce visibility.
(Granted, in some parts of eastern Ontario, they're expecting up to 30 centimetres and even a touch more...which is at least a respectable amount. But here? 15 centimetres. Big whoopty-diddly-doo.
I wasn't a weather freak in early childhood...the disease came on in my teens, as I recall...but I'm pretty sure they didn't go apeshit over six inches of snow in the 1970s. I think people would have laughed the weathermen right off the television if he'd announced six inches of snow in an ominous tone that suggested the world was about to end.
Now THIS is a storm worth getting worked up over:
from St Catharines Standard, January 1977
On Friday, January 28, 1977 a natural disaster struck Canada and the United States. Southern portions of the province of Ontario and parts of western and northern New York State were besieged by the blizzard of the century and millennium. During this winter hurricane, the temperature plunged to near zero Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius) as hurricane force winds roared across the frozen surface of Lake Erie. Temperature and wind combined to create a wind chill of 60 below zero (-51 Celsius). Visibility was also zero and remained there from 11:30 a.m on the 28th until 12:50 a.m on the 29th of January. The storm did not subside until February. Wind gusts over 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour occurred each day with official peaks ranging between 69 and 73 miles per hour (111-117 km/h).
I'd say THAT merits some alarm, wouldn't you? Maybe not out in Wreckhouse, Nfld., where that sort of thing happens once or twice a winter, but in southern Ontario, yup, that's a storm.
Six inches is not a storm. Six inches is not worthy of a 'snowfall warning'. What's next? "Tonight, the entire country is under a DARKNESS WARNING. Please drive carefully and remember to use your headlights as the DARKNESS sweeps across our region from east to west. WARNING: some DARKNESSES produce HOMICIDAL MANIACS. Take appropriate precautions".
And yet...
It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see school closures in our area tomorrow. Not in the city, but out in the surrounding areas. That would have nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with a school board fearing litigation should a bus (heaven forfend) get into an accident.
And it doesn't surprise me anymore to see cars spinning like tops any time the road surface is anything other than bare and dry--which is probably why the school board's so afraid. I've said it before and I'll say it again: winter is not summer. People ought not to think of their cars as extensions of their living rooms during the winter months....
Canada. Just when did we become a nation of wusses?
1 comment:
Well, we in Southern Ontario are certainly wusses. We've had so many mild winters, it's starting to affect our brains. Now, go North of Toronto, and you may see people behaving much differently.
Yesterday, I was out of the house from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and it snowed the ENTIRE time. Flurries of the white stuff descended to cover every available surface, and I was amazed I got anywhere in time.
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