Wednesday, four days out…
The American and European models weren’t converging. Really? I’m shocked! The American model drew the snow/ice line just to the north of us, the Europeans placed it slightly to the south. Neither was anywhere near Greenland. Snowfall amounts varied: an inch or two to several feet. Your guess was as good as mine. Nevertheless, the madness had already begun: grocery stores were war zones, gas stations were crammed with guzzlers, and hardware stores sold shovels, rock salt, and candles out in the parking lot. Tempers flared, nerves were frayed. Weather reports came in in every other minute while the phone lines to heaven were jammed with kids and teachers calling about school cancellations. Here we go…
Thursday, three days out…
It was a lovely, mild afternoon. I was humming a line from a Paul Simon song: “I get all the news I need on the weather report.” But we all know that despite the best of equipment and intentions, weather prognosticators don’t really have a clue about the when or where or accumulation of snow or ice. I’m sure they were trying their best, but just like the rest of us, they were looking out the window and sniffing the air. Nevertheless, they were giddy with excitement; this is why they became meteorologists in the first place. Six inches…ten inches…fourteen inches: did anybody really know what time it was or how much snow or ice we would get? Place your bets and get out your measuring sticks. At that point, all I really knew for sure was that it was freezing cold in Davos, Switzerland…
Friday, two days out…
It has started to snow in Dallas. Memphis was preparing for lots of ice. In the Florida panhandle, iguanas were dropping from the trees, stunned with cold. Maryland’s truth was still twenty-four hours away. “Power outages” was added to the script; “below zero wind chill” became part of the lexicon. Just as when the Maestro picks up the orchestra’s tempo, the beat quickened and the audience leaned in, rapt with a mix of anticipation and dread. Out in the streets, people were walking around, looking up at the sky; What’s on its way now? Meanwhile, down at Mar-a-Lago, it was sweater weather on the links, but then spring training was only a month away.
Late Saturday afternoon…
All the shelves in the grocery store are now bone-bare; the first few flakes are just hours away. Or not, nobody really knows. Maybe it will depend on which side of the street you live. For some families, tomorrow will be Armageddon, for others, all the preparation might be for naught. But down at the local television station, the meteorologists were either crowing or hiding in the bathroom, while the general manager was in the back room counting her ad revenue dollars. Kids were either nervous about all the homework they hadn’t done or were waxing the runners on their sleds. I don’t know about you, but I vividly remember how it felt to wake up on a frosty morning and see the world washed white. Snow day! Much to my parents’ chagrin, I was too excited to roll over and go back to sleep, so I would run downstairs, put on my goofy hat with earflaps, buckle my galoshes, pull on my fingerless mittens, and dash outside to pack my first snowball of the day. For a kid (or a teacher—believe me, I know!), nothing can beat a snow day. Except a second snow day.
First light, Sunday morning…
When I woke up, it was the utter silence I heard first. Then from across the street, I heard the scrape, scrape, scrape of a solitary snow shovel. I ran—no, limped—to the window and peered out on a grey polar landscape. There were several inches of fresh snow and more was coming down by the minute, Across the street, a Sisyphean neighbor was already shoveling his sidewalk. There was nary a snowplow in sight, but then we live on a secondary street, hardly a priority job on this winter morning—the DOT had bigger bigger fish to fry. I relished the silence: for a few heartbeats, this busy world was stilled and hushed under a blanket of pure white snow. All too soon, the digging out would begin, the snow would turn to slush, but for that one dreamy, breathless moment, it really was a winter wonderland.
I’ll be right back.
PS: Monday…
All schools cancelled!
Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay. His editorials and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores. His newest novel, “The People Game,” is scheduled for publication in February, 2026. (It’s available for pre-order now on Amazon. His website is musingjamie.net.
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