Snowpacalypse!

Building a snow horse in 2002, wearing my horse's spare halter.

If you live in the North, you will get a big laugh out of the insanity that ensues in the South when it snows.  A few flakes wisp through the air, driving Southerners into a panicked frenzy.  Suddenly there's a run on the grocery stores for beer, milk, and beanie weenies, because in the South, people generally cave in their homes until the snow passes.  Schools and work close, and the South watches as the sky is falling.

It sounds absurd, especially if you have spent any time in the North throughout your life.  The difference is the North is prepared and has been dealing with it every year.  The temperatures usually drop well below freezing and snow tends to stay snow.  Although weather of any type can come with it's share of dangers, there are a few things that make it a little more of a threat here.

Snow might mean ice.  In the blizzard of 93 I went out in the cold, wet, white stuff, but it wasn't snow, it was basically pelting small hail stones.  This was no fluffy building material that the artist in me adores.  This was icy sandpaper, crusted on top. The equipment that maintains the roads in the North is not as widely available in the South, much less the salting of the roads and such.  The snow will melt because we hang at the cusp of freezing and create lots of black ice for driving.

Southerners are not prepared.  At our last home on a snowy day, we sat in our dining room and couldn't help but watch our neighbor across the street come out to his car dressed in shorts, wearing flip-flops.  Of course being his driveway was on a hill, he of course slipped.  His truck didn't fair much better when you tried to leave later and slid down a hill of solid ice, finally abandoning the truck.

So maybe it's best that most Southerners hide in their homes and wait for it to pass, because it's not something we have to cope with very often, and it's not quite the same as it is in the North. Here there's no subtle bell curve of weather.  Here Mother Nature is bi-polar and you can go from heat to AC back to heat in the same day.  We've had events where temps have dropped or raised so suddenly that the moisture in trees expanded and they burst.

Frankly, I think hibernation is a rather good idea, and I'd gladly sleep through it all till spring.