While the following story is not an exaggeration, it is also not a typical occurrence of where I live. This is not to say that we do not get ridiculous amounts of snow (because we often do), however, I have never seen something like this.
Five days ago, I was waiting up for my sister (as she was arriving home after being on holidays in Punta Cana) and watching television on the main floor of my house. 3 times, I remember muting the television after hearing a strange noise (like someone was jumping on our deck, or dropping a chair). I looked out to see what looked like a snow tornado (granted, it was pretty small) blowing against the glass door. While this is not uncharacteristic of our winters, it is also not very common- especially since it was really nice and sunny for the entire day.
The next morning, I awoke to the sound of gushing wind. Again, this is not uncharacteristic, so I stumbled to the shower, jumped in the shower, and proceeded to get ready for the day. My mom knocked on my door and asked if it was really necessary that I go to work today. Puzzled, I said that I had left my laptop at the school, and would therefore not be able to work from home, and did not give much thought to the weird question. I got ready, as per usual and then looked outside. It was blizzarding so bad that I could not see the house across the street. My father had just left for work (near the school), so I decided to call him and ask how the roads were. While he said they were not great, he said I would be fine.
So I continued getting ready and set out about 30 minutes later. 3 blocks away from my house, the blizzard began getting worse. I considered turning around, then decided against it due to the mass amount of work that I needed to get done, and continued on my way. I got to the freeway without too much trouble and proceeded at 20km/hr to my exit. I was following the headlights of the guy in front of me until he just stopped, right there at the exit. Thinking that someone in front of him had stopped, I waited patiently for a few minutes and then realized no one was in front of him. Thinking that I had to get moving (traffic was piling up) I swerved around him and attempted to navigate through the blizzard completely blind. While I had driven this road 10,000 times in the last 4 years, I could not see 5 feet in front of my car, and also could not see the road or any street lights. I could not tell if I was driving on the road, on the shoulder, or in the ditch. After 5 minutes of clenching my steering wheel and holding my breath, hoping that I didn’t run into someone who was too stupid to put on their lights, or get rear-ended by a jackass who was going way too fast, I made it to a clearing where I could see that I had, indeed been driving on the road and had acted like a beacon of light for the following cars. I patted myself on the back and continued to the school, deciding that I would just pick up my computer and go home after hearing over and over again that the blizzard was going to get worse and worse for the next 8 hours.
2 of my OM’s were happily working away at their respective desks, paying no attention to the weather. I burst in, covered in snow with an anxious look on my face explaining how bad the weather had gotten over the past hour. Even though we have a huge bay window in our office, they were not convinced. I left and got home unscathed (but a little shaken up) and settled at my kitchen table, safe and sound. An hour after I got home, 5 main streets were closed off due to snow drifts and exits from the school were dwindling. Human resources was telling people to leave the school and try to make it home before it got worse (resulting in gridlock surrounding the school and all respective streets). At the worst of it, I could not see the front of my car from my house (which was parked 10 feet from the front door). It was pretty scary.
3 people died. Frozen to death after leaving their car (which got stuck) and attempting to find shelter.
Not only had I never seen something like this, but my parents haven’t either. In 55 years, this was the worst storm they had ever seen. Now, I have no evidence that this storm is somehow linked to the horrendous way that humans have exploited the earth’s resources (as storms worse than this happened frequently before human interference) but people….please. Open your eyes. Stop pretending that everything is going to be okay. Stop convincing yourself that you are not having an effect on the environment. Stop consuming ridiculous amounts of energy. Stop driving ridiculously huge SUV’s that guzzle more gas than a city bus. Stop being ridiculous. While we can’t reverse what we have done to the environment, we CAN stop it from getting worse.
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