It hasn’t even started snowing yet (well, a few flurries, a dusting overnight last night) and already there is an enormous reaction to the blizzard-to-be.
O’Hare has pre-emptively cancelled 1,100 flights (for those of you who were passing through: Welcome to Chicago!)
Quinn has called out the Natiional Guard.
A co-worker reported circling the parking lot at the grocery store several times last night, only to be shoved out of the way by a man reaching for bread once she actually managed to find a parking space and get inside.
The library is frantically busy, with patrons reporting they have stocked up on food and are now after books and dvds.
I finished working at 11 today – not an early departure for me, but a regular time – stopped by Starbucks on my way home to spend a Christmas gift card on bag of whole bean French Roast (call it my version of a Snowpocalypse Emergency Kit).
The grandkids are in school, most schools, libraries, businesses, offices, etc, are open today, and no doubt most of them will be closed tomorrow. By the way, here’s a great website to check Chicagoland emergency closings.
The hour-by-hour forecast on weather.com calls for “severe weather” to kick in at 3 p.m. (at my zip code-60174) and that is sustained through most of rush hour and the evening, with a lull from 6-10 p.m. (a lull in terms of it not being encased in a red warning bars that state “severe weather”) and “blizzard” kicking in at 11 p.m. and predicted to last through 7 a.m. tomorrow.
So it’s an overnight blizzard. Oh, sure, snow will continue to fall through most of the day tomorrow, and driving will no doubt be disastrous starting with this afternoon’s commute and lasting through tomorrow, but the worst of it seems to be overnight.
All of which leads me to wonder why people around me are so panicked. We are too far west to see lake-effect snow (could and undoubtedly will be, much, much worse in the city). Really, its not like we’ve never had a blizzard before – come on people, this is Illinois!
So Happy Snowpocalypse: for all of you to whom this entire event will amount to getting a day off tomorrow, and that will probably be most of us, enjoy!
For the rest of you, all of you emergency and public service workers and first-responders out there: thank you! Sorry you will not get the day off, but we appreciate you doing all the heavy lifting on and during this one. I figure the best thing we can do to thank you is go home and stay there, safely out of your way.
