Just to let y’all know, it is snowing in Central Mississippi. Really, that’s real snow. Cute, huh? 
They keep telling me it’s going to start snowing here (central NC) this afternoon. The temperature is currently in the upper thirties, but it’s supposed to start dropping as the cold front comes in.
Still, it won’t be as bad as the weather in Chicago, where I used to live.
Oh jeez it’s so cute to see the Southerners with snow, and I don’t mean that in a condescending way. More like I smile when I see my little dude’s thrill at seeing the snow come down.
I sort of look forward to snow here (Maryland) after spending so many years in cold, snowy Prairie and Tundra Canada. Here, it melts after a couple of days and is rarely cold.
I got in trouble with a friend here last winter. The one day it snowed here (about an inch overnight, which was melted long before noon) I commented humorously on the news coverage warning everyone about the “hazardous driving conditions” and advising people to stay off the roads if at all possible. I got a lecture on how people here aren’t used to dealing with slick roads, and the city doesn’t have the equipment like Chicago has to deal with it.
It is so very cute Gingy, and I know you mean that nicely.
My 19-year old son was so impressed that he called me at 2:30 a.m. to alert me. Heh.
One of my favorite anectodes concerns a friend of mine from Prentiss, Mississippi, which is another hour or two south of Jackson (here). One time she was visiting me, and it began to snow. She immediately jumped up and began gathering up her purse, keys, etc. When I joked at her about being afraid to drive in the snow, she admonished me “I can’t ! I can’t drive in the snow! I’ve got to get home !!”. She was afraid of it. I wanted to giggle but I was polite and did not. 
Oh, and I was also warned that if it’s going to snow I am required to go to the store and stock up on bread and milk. Being lactose intolerant, I asked if the milk was optional. (Yes, I am a smartass.) Apparently it has something to do with the perishability of these items, in case I get snowed in. Which is not problem for me, since I always have about a month’s worth of food on hand anyway.
Don’t forget toilet paper! I thought the Holy Trinity you had to get if it snows in the South is bread, milk, and toilet paper. At least it was in the places I lived.
So I’ll sit here in Idaho and laugh at all of you, but do be careful. I mean, I have snow tires. And there are snow plows. And bulldozers. And trucks. All sorts of snow removal equipment, and lots of people using it, every time it snows.
Of course, this is my first real winter since I was six. I’m loving it. I may get tired of the snow by April, though.
We got about an inch here in Atlanta. It was very pretty. Snow is rare here and very exciting for us. School is canceled, and most people can get away with taking off work if the roads are even slightly bad. You can play in it or just kick back and look at it, and it usually melts in a day or three, which isn’t really long enough to get sick of it. Is there anything comparable for other parts of the country?
Yes, schools will close here when there has been more than 15 inches of accumulation overnight, or wind chill reaches -20 or so. (Approximate at best, these numbers are just my recollection) However, unless there has been the kind of major “I can’t even open my front door” kind of snow (like Buffalo gets sometimes), your typical employer is gonna expect you to be at your desk at a reasonable time.
The very notion of closing schools over 1 inch of snow boggles my mind. Driving in 1 inch of snow (without plowing, or salting) is hardly difficult. It’s not terribly different from driving in rainy conditions.
But I can see it from the point of view of locals who’ve never even seen a snowflake, it could be rather frightening.
They canceled the Barry Manilow concert that was scheduled in Raleigh for tonight. Apparently after yesterday’s snow (there’s a light dusting on the grass) and the overnight cold, the roads are now covered with a dangerously slick coating of ice which makes driving so hazardous that people should not risk driving unless absolutely necessary.
I posted thispic in another thread when someone said “I can’t understand why people don’t change their own oil”
I didn’t get any volunteers.
Not to worry, this had all melted by noon.
I agree, and people with a little sense about them, or someone who’s a good driver, will not have problems. Some folks Just Don’t Understand, tho. I suppose it’s a combination of being confronted with a new and startling thing and dumbassery. Oh, and you know how driving while staring at the snow coming down will kind of hypnotize you? Yeah. I think some folks here can’t help themselves from doing that.
D00d! Where’s your garage?
They close schools in the south after a snow storm in order to keep the school buses from having to drive on it. The school districts know that it is usually possible for parents to drive their kids to school on 1", but they don’t want to take the legal risk of having a school bus slide on a patch of ice (which appears more frequently than snow down here).
I am guessing that if you live somewhere that you have plenty of snow or none, it’s just hard to understand. Imagine, if you will, that you live somewhere that gets on average 1-3 days of sunshine per year. Would you want to treat those rare days like ‘business as usual’? Or would you rather take a day off work and school, slather on some sunscreen and go out and enjoy it? It would probably be a slight traffic hazard, too, if it were that uncommon. Everything looks different and it’s very distracting, plus you wouldn’t be used to the glare or have sunglasses or visors in your car.
Besides, the weather guys are so lousy at predicting it, we never have any idea if we are going to have one inch or six, sleet, snow, or a rain or frogs. 
I hiked up along Lake Lanier (the drought-stricken reservoir for Metro Atlanta), and saw the deer tracks around an empty feeder. Probably neglected by the same feckless ranger who doesn’t enforce the “no dogs” rule on the trail, but is willing to emerge from the station at 5PM closing in the comfort of his SUV to sic the towtruck on vehicles of straggling hikers still in the parking lots.
I saw a few deer themselves; descendants, by the way, of Wisconsin imports after the settlers and original tribes hunted the native deer to extinction.
Yesterday and today, out in the relatively cold, I encountered Korean-Americans, not an unusual thing in a metro area of five million people. But unlike in warmer months, I could tell from ten feet’s distance that they’d bolstered themselves for the weather by eating kimchee.
Just a pleasant diversion, especially since I hate hot weather much more than cold. Up north you can’t imagine the novelty of seeing a skein of ice on a local pond, or of making cocoa from scratch and having a skein of milk on the surface; enabling one to use the work “skein” twice in one day.