Apparently I am an equal opportunity doubting Thomas. It is hard for me to accept the hype of just about anything, and this doubt includes weather forecasts. In my years in the City, the first weather-disaster hype I ignored and that turned out correct. Then I ignored the second weather-hype and got stormed out. So the past couple of days the hype has been escalating about how awful the impending storm is going to be, and I’ve ignored it. Until last evening when I received an email from someone in Australia, saying they were ‘thinking of me’ as I prepared for the ‘storm of the century.’ My first line of defense is always, wash the sheets, complete the laundry and buy flowers. But the email gave me pause, and I set my alarm to be out of the house by 8 am today. I had other plans in the works, a business appointment at 9:30 but this earlier hour was to ‘stock up’ for the storm. First I visited the bakery for bread and the drugstore for water. Not many people were at either establishment; shopping was easy, though I did notice that the ‘orange juice’ section was quite depleted and the water shelf had some attrition. oh and the battery inventory was seriously wanting. There was a palpable energy; the ‘working together’ to prepare for impending ‘something’. More personnel were tasked with stocking the shelves, less at the cash registers, more on the floor asking if you needed help. This voiced concern creates a unified feeling of preparation. I brought my purchases home, laid them on the shelf in the kitchen and headed out now to the grocery store . And that is where I found everyone! The shelves weren’t bare, except for the parsley supply, but the carts were busy being pushed and loaded. I chose to buy: ‘sharable proteins’ more liquids, soup makings and a treat or two. More than I normally spend in one shopping trip, but there was a ‘now or never’ feeling to being in the store. Brought these supplies home; decided it would be wise to head out again to the post office and collect my mail. The post office, which I visited twice within the hour of 12:30 and 1:30 had changed their closing time, upped it by 3 hours and already knew they were going to be closed tomorrow, Tuesday. By this time, the snow had dwindled to just an extremely light suggestion of powder in the air.
Now skip ahead to 3:30. The snow fall has become serious and by that I mean the flakes are fatter, heavier and more of them. The snow plows can no longer scrap to the black pavement. [Appreciate that the heavy sanitation vehicles are equipped with snow plows. What a good double use.[ There are far fewer buses that pass and those that do are empty and the number of driving cars have slowed to a trickle. There is no one parked on the main thoroughfare. The City may be in for a storm indeed. I have been solar charging my new ambient-weather-adventurer-emergency-radio, making a pot of soup from the vegetables purchased and have vacuumed in the event that we lose electricity. Now the idea of hunkering down is beginning to look like a reality.
6:30 pm Monday. Not a flake in the air. Have been out ‘gathering wood for the fire’ and ‘spirits’ in the event it does pick up in the late night early morning, but it is most benign at present.
Six [6!] snowplows one after the other, just cleared the street for traffic. Rush hour. Except there is no rush hour, it happened early afternoon.
9:00 pm Monday. There is a wind. and there are a few flakes in the air, but one has to look into the light to see the flakes and I can not tell if they are just particles blowing off a structure.
11:00 pm Monday. All traffic is off the road. There is a ban on driving except for emergency vehicles. So quiet. I could get used to this in a heart beat.
TINDER – going up or down in flames. For those too old to know, Tinder is an app that given the designates/parameters one fills into the app spaces, you can find a ‘date’ within that radius. Apparently there is a lot of that going on tonight in the City. Will check with my neighbor and ask if she’s tinder-ing up.
It has not been snowing, it is wind blowing already fallen flakes.
1:00 am Tuesday. The snow is coming down, in the wind. Time to close the curtains, keep in the heat, and wait and see what the dawn brings.
1:30 am Tuesday. Can’t stop myself from peaking between the curtain halves. The snowfall is thin and the other side of the street is easily seen. But the silence. No foot traffic, no vehicular traffic, no sound but that of the refrigerator in my kitchen. I could get used to this.
