I have a couple of services provided by Yahoo and Google, where I get news stories that relate to parking. They list everything from city council meetings to planning commission approvals, to arguments between merchants and the local mayor. This week 90 percent of the stories have been about snow, and the “snow day” rules going into effect because of the Blizzard of 2011.
I could tell when the snow was expected – on Monday the stories were from Dallas, Kansas City, and Des Moines. On Tuesday they were from Minneapolis/St Paul, Chicago, and Cleveland. On Wednesday the East coast was blanketed. From Portland, Maine to Washington DC, people were told to keep their cars off the street so plows could do their jobs. Chicago was spending millions to clear the snow. Bloomberg in New York was telling everyone that there wouldn’t be a repeat of last month’s fiasco. And every little burg in between was gearing up to do battle with Mother Nature.
If the articles seems a tad shy on PT’s home page or our Facebook page it’s because not much was going on except talk of coming snow, existing snow, and what was happening with snow. Our printer in Missouri let us know on Tuesday they were shutting down for the duration (people simply couldn’t get to work) so PT may be a couple of days late this month. Airlines are cancelling thousands of flights and that affects all airports, not just those with snow. If a plane is held up in Chicago, it can’t pick up passengers in LA. We had a couple of hundred flights cancelled over the past few days here where it’s warm.
Snow is beautiful, snow can be fun. But it can also be expensive, painful, and in the way. All the best wishes to those of you who have to deal with it.
JVH
