Storms

Yesterday was our first serious winter storm of the season. I thank the gods that

1. the National Weather Service was right in the forecast,
2. the National Weather Service was forthright,
3. I could follow their recommendations.

The details:

I get my weather news from wunderground. After a quick look at the summary, when there’s impending doom, I always go to the “Scientific Forecaster Discussion”, a fantastic service. I love the geekiness of it, even if I only understand at most half of it.

So, in the run-up to yesterday’s storm, on Wednesday they had this sentence in the scientific discussion: “Unfortunately timing of heaviest snow will coincide with the late day/evening commute. Therefore … if you have the flexibility you should strongly consider leaving work or school early tomorrow /no later than lunch time/.” I checked my schedule and saw that I would have to cancel/reschedule two appointments, but I decided that this was easier than getting stuck in storm traffic. Then, yesterday morning, the scientific discussion confirmed the previous day’s warning and said: “Travel is not recommended this afternoon … as snow will fall at the rate of at least an inch per hour. If possible … travel should be completed by 1 PM across all of southern New England”.

So, I left MIT at 11:30am to drive out to Framingham to get the kids from school. By 12:45pm, we were back in the city to drop off the carpool kids. The snow had started. At 1pm, we crossed the River Street bridge into Cambridge and almost rear-ended the car in front of us, saved by the ABS brakes. By 1:15pm, we were safely in our house, hot chocolate and all. By then, it was snowing hard. We had 11 inches of snow within a few hours. Quite impressive.

You may have heard what happened to the millions that all left work once they saw the snow falling outside: we have friends that were stuck in the gridlock for hours on end, making for a 5 or 6 or 7 hour commute back home.

So, hurray for the National Weather Service who were right on the money and hurray for a flexible job that lets me rejigger my schedule in cases of emergencies.

Now, we’re waiting for tomorrow night’s Nor’easter.