Cheers and Jeers: to the first major snowfall of the winter on the Avalon Peninsula. It gave us a white Christmas, for sure, but probably more than a few black thoughts as well, especially among the last-minute gift buying crowd.
Cheers: to a slow start to the holidays. With last Tuesday’s storm predicted well in advance, many people got to slide into holiday mode a little more quickly than usual. There’s nothing better than watching the snow fall from inside the house and knowing there’s no shoveling panic to make it into work the next morning.
Jeers: to the havoc the same storm caused for travel and visiting plans. Despite the best efforts of airlines, highway plows, city crews and everyone else working to keep transportation routes open, the storm did disrupt the best-laid plans of travellers and visitors alike. At the same time, many still made the effort. Why is it that the slipping, sliding, whiteouts and drifts seem to come as a brand-new surprise to drivers every single year? “Why, what is this pesky white stuff? It appears to be somehow slippery. I can barely maintain control here at my usual 110 kilometres an hour. But it does let me splatter those helpless pedestrians.”
Jeers: to St. John’s still being very much a driving city. The main streets were plowed right down to the bare pavement by early Friday but were still being industriously salted by city crews. The side streets had been done, and even the cul-de-sacs had been cleared to the very curb. But the city’s commitment to sidewalk plowing? The snow started Tuesday. By Friday, only a few random sections of sidewalk had been plowed, and those that had were often quickly filled in again by street plows. Every city councillor — and every driver on Thorburn Road, for that matter — should have to make the snow-march from the Avalon Mall to Mount Scio Road on the sidewalk three days after a major snow storm. Oh, and as a special bonus, every single one of those inside-lane-speed-racer-got-somewhere-real-important-to-be-at-6:30-a.m.-on-the-Friday-after-Christmas slush splashers should have to do it pushing a stroller.
Jeers: to endlessly complaining about weather forecasts. Yes, forecasts sometimes don’t live up to their billing, and yes, media forecasters sometimes seemed to be locked in a battle over who can predict the most frightening weather, rather than what’s the most likely. It’s frustrating to cancel or change plans for severe weather that doesn’t actually turn up, but we do live on an island where weather systems can be fickle, to say the least, and the difference between rain and snow is occasionally a knife-edge. As your mother used to say about dinner, if you don’t like it, make your own.