Come on, people. This isn’t Texas. There, where they’re prepping for the Super Bowl, a surprise ice storm is freaking people out.
Here in Toronto, for heaven’s sake, we’ve started cancelling school, staying in downtown hotels overnight and, generally, behaving as if a snow storm is a major game changer.
Me, I woke up, shovelled the now, got dressed and headed to work in the wake of what was a minor snowfall. Our neighbourhood elementary school was closed down, the Bathurst bus was empty and the subway was also sparsely populated. Obviously, even large businesses were taking a snow day. Since when does a snowstorm shut the city down?
Don’t blame the weather forecasters. They were always predicting only one small and foot and a half of snow. Maybe we can blame the metric system, 20 to 30 centimeters of precipitation does sound mighty but do the math, people. It’s just not that much.
Better, though, to blame the 24-hour news cycle that turned these flurries into Snowmageddon. This is big business for the Weather Channel that thrives on this kind of thing, so no surprise that they were turning the storm into a major event.
But BreakfastTelevision began early this morning at 5 am to track Toronto’s attempts to dig out from the flakage. CBC’s Here and Now roads guy announced yesterday that he was staying in a downtown hotel so he could be assured of getting back to work this morning.
Puh-lease. We’re making like Boston – when I was in college there they cancelled school after two inches of snow hit the ground. It isn’t even 1998 in Toronto, when four feet of snow fell over only three days and Mayor Lastman called the army in.
Snowed by news reporters, we’ve gone wimpy over winter.
