Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2013 21:00:44 -0500
Subject: [WSFA] Re: weather preparations
From: "Elspeth Kovar" <ekovar at panix.com>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Tamar Lindsay wrote:
>> hysteria over a few flakes
>
> I'm from NH and learned to drive on packed snow before they began salting the roads. But
> that was packed snow, not black ice, and most people learned to deal with it and
> remembered how from year to year.  In the MD area and northern VA, we are in a sort of
> "climate edge" where instead of snow, we are more likely to have ice and freezing rain,
> and people have less experience so they forget how to deal with it.  Keeping a good
> supply of non-perishables (including dry milk) in the house before the winter weather
> hits means I don't have to go out in bad weather.

Bravo for pointing out what many miss! It's not just that we're on the border of snow/no
snow or a lot of people being from elsewhere. It's that we are on the border and unless
you spent your formative years driving someplace like this you're never used to black
ice.

My father grew up in Duluth, started driving regularly during the war - kinda snowy
there - and came back to US northern climes.

Packed snow was fine. Snow packed into ice, you learn it. Overlapping layers of ice and
snow, especially when the level on the tarmac was ice, not so much. But black ice . . .

As a local you learn about packed snow but don't always get that packed snow can get
packed into ice. On the other hand you pretty much assume that there may be ice under
the snow and most get the idea of black ice. You grow up around here and learn it or
learn it the hard way. He had to make a point of learning it. I learned it while
learning to drive.

I keep the basics on hand because I eat basics, not because snow is coming. If snow is
coming I stock up on things missing and comfort foods. Not from it being necessary or
I'm scared of other drivers but because I want to go out in the snow by choice, not
because I need to.

Amusement value:

For those who keep snarking about snow and DC area drivers my then-husband, from
Pittsburgh, was one of you. "Was" because somewhere along the way I eventually got fed
up and snarled, "Fine. Then go back to Pittsburgh already!"

Never heard another comment and in many ways he was a man of sense: I doubt that from
that day to this anyone else has.

Elspeth