waking up

On Monday, windchills in the Finger Lakes were between minus 15 and minus 25. The temperature without the wind was in the low single digits, and because I like to think of myself as a weather tough-ass, I have tended to discount windchill as not really part of the cold equation. I cannot explain this in any rational fashion. If I look at the thermometer, or pass a bank thermometer, and it reads, say -14, then I'll think, "Ok. That's cold." But let the bank sign in the small town where I live read 7, and I'll think, "Oh, it's not that cold. Don't be a wimp." Even if the car is being blown sideways across the yellow lines.

The only thing I can liken it to is the people around here who insist on distinguishing between "just lake effect" snow and "real" snow. Now, real snow is when some Nor'easter blows up the coast and the system inevitably stalls right over us. At that point, we'll get pounded—10 to 20 to 30 inches of snow that will fall over the course of 24-48 hours. Depending on the rate of snow, schools may or may not be closed. Around here, it's become sort of a point of acceptance that unless a meteorite crashes into the district building, the public schools will not close in Ithaca. They can be closed in every district in the I-81 corridor between Scranton and Watertown; unless the superintendent can't get her car out of her driveway, the rest of us are going to have to drive our kids in, or risk putting them on the busses, because there's no way you're letting your kid get lost in some snowdrift higher than her head. And Cornell? Years ago, when I was a graduate student there, Tompkins County declared a snow emergency and said that anyone caught driving after 12 pm would be arrested. (Snow was falling at a rate of 3-7 inches PER HOUR). Did Cornell close? No. The university stayed open, and I actually had a professor get mad at me because I called to say I could not present a paper at a seminar that afternoon because I didn't want to get arrested. "Well, can't you just walk?" he said. "Um. No. I live 7 miles from the university and it's 17 degrees below zero right now." He hung up on me in a huff.