Snow Time for Panic

2005-01-05

I am amused. We are having a rather pleasant winter storm. The news people have been talking it up for quite a few days. They?ve got people in a real panic.

Being a bachelor who eats rather healthily, I go to the grocery store every couple of days (fresh veggies don?t stay fresh long). Today the store was a mad house. Frightened people rambled around in a tizzy. All the milk sold out and the store had to put up signs saying so.

What gets me about this is that we are located in Iowa and it is the first week of January. This state has been my home for the majority of my life. Even in those few years when I didn?t live in Iowa I kept track of my home state. All the snow is fairly normal.

My childhood winters consisted of tall snowdrifts and howling winds. There was one winter where the family got snowed in for over a week and had to eat only what we had available. When the potatoes ran out and all we had was the beef in the freezer, the terror set in. (Though I enjoy a nice steak and eat beef quite regularly, you don?t want to see only one type of any food.) Of course, we lived on a farm out in the middle of nowhere.

The local super market is not in the middle of nowhere. Most of the customers for this store live here in Cedar Rapids, the second largest city in Iowa. Though the snow will fall from Tuesday night to Thursday midday, the roads will be cleared regularly. Plows and sand trucks will be out the whole time. No one will be snowed in.

It probably didn?t help when the National Weather Service came to town and formally announced that the snow would be heavy. There is a prediction of almost twelve inches of snow in this area and we haven?t had a single snowfall that large in about fifteen years. Still, I plan on driving tomorrow (unless my college closes in which case I have no specific place to go). There is nothing in the forecast to suggest that city-dwellers should be stocking up on weeks worth of food.

Oh, well, I got my half-gallon of skim milk along with all my other groceries. If people want to buy way too much stuff and support my local businesses, more power to them. I?m going to have a nice sugar-free hot cocoa, with a touch of peppermint, and watch the snow fall.