No, the key to life in the upper right hand corner of the country is to comprehend our relationship with weather. Unlike most of the southern tier of the continent, we have four seasons. Spring and fall are glorious, and summer doesn't suck. Winter, however, requires a bit of training.
Start with temperature. It's not cold until the temps go below 15-20 degrees. Less than 4 inches of snow barely counts as snow. We notice it at around 4-6, but it doesn't bother us until about 6-8, and even then, nothing gets cancelled. Schools, church events and other social functions aren't in real danger until over 8 inches of snow. After that, there's a sliding scale of bothersomeness. We acknowledge a foot of snow as a "real storm." From there on up, the spectrum extends to the top of the scale, which is a measure of comparison to the Holy Weather Event of The Past 50 Years, also known as The Blizzard of '78.
If you were here during The Blizzard of '78 (it's always capitalized, and somewhere, a chorus sings a high C with great reverence whenever it's invoked), no further explanation is necessary. If you were either not here or not yet alive, it cannot be explained to you using usual vocabulary. Stories take on the sepia-tinged, mixed hue of nostalgia, legend and long ago coped- with dread.
"Yeah, this is a pretty good storm, but it's not The Blizzard of '78." (cue the chorus in the distance)
"Are you kidding? You call this a blizzard? Seriously, I lived through a real blizzard. This is nothing, kid. You shoulda been around during the Blizzard of '78 (faint chorus). Let me tell you about it."
What follows, typically, is a 20-minute soliloquy with four part harmony and twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was.
But if you don't have time for all that, you can just use the FTAS.
For those not familiar with it, FTAS stands for the French Toast Alert System.
Here, check this out.
It was high when the post was published because there was a storm due. We ended up with about 2 feet of snow....
Who's Harvey Leonard, you ask? Currently, he's a meteorologist at WCVB, channel 5. In 1978, he was at channel 7. Of all the weathermen in the area, Harvey is the only one who pegged The Blizzard just right. Harvey is, therefore, a minor deity. When he tells us it's important, we make french toast.
P has to go to the store now.
Photo images: Harvey Leonard, wcvb.com, Blizzard of '78 highway photo, dunlapcusd.com
6 comments:
Don't lie to the nice people, David.
The four New England seasons are summer, fall, winteeeeeer, and mud.
David, what a wonderful educational piece! I hope all newcomers to New England, and of course Infants (those under the age of five in 1978) read, study, and are enlightened.
I love this!
And I'm never moving there.
Ah ... the French Toast Theory ... works here in DC too. And it must caus gastro upset for many because toilet paper is also cleared from store shelves.
I remember The Blizzard. We had no school for a week, no power for longer than that. My sister and I were farmed out to relatives in the next town over, and my parents took turns stoking the wood stove at night so the pipes wouldn't freeze. We would go back home during the day. The yard was a maze of snow tunnels. KID NIRVANA.
I follow the FTAS on twitter now. You shoudl to. It is funny how you read something and you think " so and so needs to see this" and you never even met so and so. :)
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