The World According to Nick |
My take on Software, Technology, Politics, and anything else I feel like talking about. |
Friday, January 21, 2005
That Doesn't Count as a StormRaleigh North Carolina was shut down yesterday by an inch of snow:
An inch of snow shut down an entire major city? An inch of snow?! Are you kidding me? In Wisconsin they sometimes don't even to put down any salt for an inch of snow, and we somehow manage to get kids to and from school, and even drive around town. Hell, they don't even shut down schools for 6 or 8 inches of snow in Milwaukee. That is just sad.
I feel the need to explain. Being a Southerner, I can say that the reason we shut down for such a light snow is: lack of experience!
People here do not know how to drive in even light snow or ice. They hear snow and they think blizzard, and the images in their mind are of cars sliding all over the place. So they drive 20MPH on the interstate during flurries. They buy a week's worth of food because they think they will be "snowed in" complete with 6 foot drifts--from an inch of snow. I liken it to if you were to have a tornado in your area. If an F1 were to touch down in Wisconsin (which has probably happened, but is a rare occurence), the citizenry would probably all freak out. Northerners can't deal with tornadoes, Southerners can't deal with snow.
Not that I'm trying to start a disaster competition here, but Wisconsin does get tornadoes every year. We may not get as many as states in Torado alley, but we are certainly hit frequently enough, including some wicked F3's and F4's. A couple years ago a city west of Madison was wiped away completely by an F4.
Just some quick google searching yeilded this site that chronicles some of the bigger Wisconsin tornadoes with pictures, and this site which lists every tornado to hit Wisconsin by county from 1950 - 1995.
ok ok ok....so tornadoes were a bad example. The other one I was gonna go with is earthquake, but since I have no experience with earthquakes I went with tornadoes.
Anyway, we've digressed. The answer to the question is that southerners have little experience with snow in any form, and because you can see it coming for days people completely freak out.
I sorta see what you mean... but still not really. The earthquake example doesn't help me at all since I lived in California for 12 years. I know all about earthquakes.
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Name: Nick Home: Wauwatosa, WI, United States I'm a Software Consultant in the Milwaukee area. Among various geeky pursuits, I'm also an amateur triathlete, and enjoy rock climbing. I also like to think I'm a political pundit. View My Profile Archives
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