Waiting For Snow

If the jet lag accompanied by three small people hasn't undone my brain the weather forecast calling for snow certainly will.  In Shanghai I expect the world to come to a full-stop when freezing rain or nay, snow touch the ground because well, they have palm trees there and that's unnatural and that umbrellas "yu san" only work in sun and rain, and bikes don't come with snow tires unless you have an unnamed friend's mountain bike.

In Boston, it's cold in the winter. Not even moderately cold, it's bone chilling, take your breath away cold (not like Harbin, but that's another story) and we thrive on that...all the cold, none of the mountains.  We complain about the cold like it's unusual too, but that's just the Boston temperament, we complain about the heat and the snow.

4, 5 & 7 are all predicting snow in varying amounts to start somewhere between lunch and supper and as a result food shopping and driving will be white knuckle experiences for most people.  For us, after a few winters of 2-3 cm of snow a snow storm even just a few inches would be a true winter experience.  The kind of experience you get from making snowballs, a snowman, using a shovel instead of a broom to move the snow, hearing snow crunch and squeal under the tires and the actual joy on the faces of the three wee ones.

The winter before we moved to China we had a doozy of a winter...just awful in my memory but even the oldest two kids were too little to remember it outside of photos.  We had a few big snows in Beijing (in fact the snowiest winter in 100 years, they say) and I remember being surprised that there was no snow removal machinery...that's right no plows, not a one, but men with gardening tools breaking up ice on the roadways and the highway is not a memory you forget.  Snow in Beijing caused major havoc and I was surprised because, well it is cold there...cold as Boston, yep I said it, but dry like a desert so snow is unanticipated I suppose.

Um, back to the topic at hand...today/tonight's snow "storm" which is building to blizzard status depending on who you talk to.  Here's the run down, Channel 4 says snow but no details about amounts...the Storm Team over at channel 5 says snow changing to rain, but they get points for having a cool site...Channel 7says snow to rain tonight but has a nice picture with snow totals for the Commonwealth.

All the hoopla not very many hoops.