On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 21:31:07 -0600, "HeyBub" <heybub@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>Robert wrote:
>
>>
>> Much of Chicagoland received 65 inches this winter, although the
>> official reading at O'Hare is only 51. The average is 38; the record
>> is 90 (1979). We're not going to break the record.
>>
>> Highway departments in northern Illinois are running out of salt
>> because we've had 30 'snow events' requiring road clearing, twice the
>> usual number.
>>
>> Road clearing in Chicagoland is outstandingly good. Roads are clear
>> two hours after snow stops falling. In 1979, roads were impassible
>> for a week following a two foot snowfall. People got so mad about it,
>> they voted the mayor, Michael Bilandic, out of office. (He went on to
>> become chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.) Politicians
>> learned to spare no expense clearing snow.
>>
>
>Lucky. My city owns not one single snowplow. 'Course it doesn't snow much
in
>Houston, maybe 1/4 inch every five years (we're at the same latitude as
>Cairo). But when it DOES snow, boy! Schools close, roadways close (mostly
>due to multi-car collisions), people stock up on canned goods,
Pop-Tarts. Wal-Mart studied this and found people do not stock up on bread
and milk, as
commonly thought, they stock up on beer and Pop-Tarts. In particular,
strawberry.
"In 2001, the United States military dropped 2.4 million Pop-Tarts in
Afghanistan during
the United States War in Afghanistan."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Tart
>shelters
>open, everybody goes to church and prays for divine guidance. Kids make
>foot-high snowmen. Cats get confused. Dogs don't notice.
A Chicago woman said, "I moved to San Antonio and got a job in a factory.
One day it
snowed .. one inch. They closed the schools and the factory. People were
wi****ng each
other luck in making it home alive, not getting stuck in a ditch and
freezing to death. I
kid you not; they were serious. The next day, I and the manager were the
only ones who
showed up for work. He was from Ohio."
It snows a lot in Amarillo, but very seldom in Lubbock. Nonetheless,
people THINK Lubbock
has terrible weather. That's because the Chamber of Commerce spreads false
information to
dissuade foreigners i.e. yankees and east Texans. Dallas papers regularly
show pictures of
people digging their cars out of snow banks .. "in the Panhandle". It
works, people
believe it. The only foreigners in Lubbock are Banglade**** doctorial
candidates in
agriculture. That they're the only ones who didn't get the word proves our
coverage is
pretty darn good.
>On the other hand, at hurricane warning time, when our visiting northern
>bretheren look down and say: "Make tracks, feet!," we stock up on beer
and
>have a party.
>
>It's what you're used to.
Jacksonville Florida almost never gets hit by hurricanes. I think they had
one in fifty
years. In 2000, a major one was predicted to hit the city .. around 7am.
The day before,
businesses closed and people started fleeing, causing a massive traffic
jam on I-10. It
took 12 hours to go 100 miles west. Half the population left; the other
half were putting
plywood over windows.
Surfers came from hundreds of miles around. The waves were pretty good. I
went out on the
Jacksonville Pier to watch them. The pier washed away a few hours later.
The hurricane missed. It went by 100 miles out in the ocean. By 8am it was
all over; the
hurricane was north of the city. Here's the freakish part: PEOPLE
CONTINUED BOARDING
WINDOWS. Business remained closed. TV stations had re****ters on the ocean
front nervously
re****ting on a non-event. I pondered why this irrational behavior. Was it
just poor risk
assessment?
It was Jacksonville's fifteen minutes of fame. For once, they were at the
center of
national news. They liked the adrenaline rush, ddn't want it to stop. The
snowbound in San
Antonio fealt the same rush. That explains why people in disaster areas
seem UP. Yes, the
tornado destroyed everything they own, but they're ok and can't wait to
rebuild on the
same spot. Just don't turn the camera off.
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