Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Holiday Storm 2004

The city is a buzz this morning -- not because Christmas is just a couple of days away, but because we're in the beginning stages of the first snow storm of the winter.  (Never mind winter officially started just yesterday.)  The news channels are already calling it "Holiday Storm 2004"!!!

We started bracking for the storm Monday night when the TV weather people issued a "winter weather watch" for today and Thursday.  Tuesday morning the "watch" turned into a "warning" and the excitement started to build.  As leftovers from my childhood, the anticipation of snow is as exciting to me as the snow itself.  I was in heaven yesterday - we kept a vigilant watch of the local news channels web pages to get the up-to-the-minute forecasts. I was almost giddy from the excitement. 

My parents were preparing for the storm while I was watching Dopplar radar - they did our Christmas grocery shopping early yesterday morning.  I called them yesterday afternoon to get a report from their trip to grocery store - I was sure that it would be a madhouse with people jamming the aisles as they get their obligatory bread, milk, and beer.  I was shocked when my folks said the store wasn't crowded at all.  That was a different story last night; one co-worker said she had to circle the Krogers parking lot 3 times last night before she could find a place to park. 

The latest forecast for Louisville was about 9" of snow by the time the storm ends tomorrow.  But honestly, anything more than an inch of snow here really doesn't matter - it could be 3" or 30", and it would still have the same effect:  panic.  An inch we can handle with no problems; anything more and the city shuts down.  Our saving grace with Holiday Storm 2004 is the fact that schools were already out this week for Christmas break, and alot of workers decided to take a vacation day today when they heard the forecast. 

I, too, am prepared for this storm - I got out my snow boots last night, dug out a couple of scrapers and brushes, and most off all, yesterday morning I postponed putting my Blazer in the shop for some repairs.  I think it was a wise choice - in the few minutes it's taken me to type this in, the updated forecast is now 12-15" for Louisville. Last night, I shuffed the vechicles and tucked the BMW safely in the carport and moved my Blazer back to the nice toasty garage.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This bites..........I'm stuck in the house....with nothing but housework to do, what's a person to do? you tell me?

Anonymous said...

My dad, who works at GE, has several coworkers from Iowa, Minnesota, etc., has told me about what they have said about Louisville in the winter. They laugh all the time about how scores of 80 year old grandmothers go running to the shelfs at krogers putting everything edible in their carts. What's even better to me though is the Holiday Storm 2004 bulletins at the bottom of the screen talking about closings. I just loove how East Audubon Baptist Church had to call in to WHAS about its cancelling of wednesday night service. When my brother and I went into their 300 sq. ft. sanctuary, there were 16 people there, including the three member choir and the pastor.