Count me among those who woke up this morning mighty relieved to find that we weren’t buried under a mountain of snow. As I lay in the quiet, I was immensely grateful to hear the quiet tick of my alarm clock, a sure sign that we still had electricity. The pre-storm forecast and my experience with Hurricane Sandy had me prepared for the prospect of disaster. And while so many others are mocking the National Weather Service and other forecasters who got this storm wrong, I’m just glad to be safe.
It’s hard to tell because of the blowing and drifting, but it looks like we got just short of a foot of snow in my corner of New Jersey. More snow is coming down as I write this post. Later today, JT and I will go out and clear a path. For now, we’re enjoying the blessings of a snow day morning. The weather looks to be significantly colder in the week ahead, with lows in the single digits by the weekend, so this snow will stick around for a while.
In the last few years, it’s been my experience that weather extremes are on the increase. Those extremes are driven by global climate change. Our 21st century sensibilities seem to have convinced us that we have can know everything. Alas, we cannot, especially in a period where the earth is adjusting to some significant alternations in the global climate. To snidely comment on the errors of weather forecasters while a significant portion of the nation cheerfully ignores the obvious signs of man-made climate change seems like a dangerous combination of ignorance and hubris. How about we instead count our blessings, share gratitude that this snowstorm wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and contemplate how we can ease the burden of our human actions on the only planet we have?
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