Another snow job

Well, they managed to do it to us again.

Were you able to make it through the drifts and dig out your car this morning?
Well, I would certainly hope so. After all, we didn’t get any snow. None. Zippo.
We got rain. And not all that much.

The roads were wet this morning. Barely. I’m telling you the conditions were absolutely treacherous – trying to negotiate my way from the bedroom downstairs to the coffee maker. The roads? Oh, they were fine.

Of course, this all started on Friday, just as soon as even the remotest chance of snow appeared on the horizon. That immediately made it “the big story.” The forecasters, not content with being unable to tell us what it will be like 15 minutes from now, zero in on the possibility of snow that is still more than two days away.

The call all day Saturday and Sunday was for 1-3 inches of snow Sunday night into Monday. The storm was expected to start as rain, then change over into snow and make the Monday commute a mess. The city was supposed to get mostly rain a light dusting of snow. North and west would get more, south and east even less.

Well, they got the rain part right.

Snow? Not exactly, unless those magical “northern and western suburbs” now include Boston.

The storm skipped us altogether and headed for New England.

One school district in Chester County, Owen J. Roberts, is actually opening two hours late this morning. Maybe they have icy conditions. They don’t have much snow. That decision was apparently made Sunday night.

This has been a pet peeve of mine for a while now. And I don’t suppose it’s going to change any time soon. People are fascinated by the weather. And in this area, we have panic attacks at even the mention of snow.

That, of course, translates into ratings. That’s why we are indundated with all manner of glitzy radar packages and why the weather report seems to dominate the nightly news.

And no, newspapers are not immune to this forecasting biz. We had stories on both our Web site and print edition.

Let’s all blame John Bolaris. He’s back in town, just in time for another snow storm that wasn’t.

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