The Best Thing That Happened This Week: The Big Snow!

Photos | Christopher Leaman

You may have noticed that professional weather-watchers are adorning their forecasts these days with a lot of “Well, now, we can’t say for sure, since the models are constantly changing … ” And no wonder. It was just about this same time last year that we were being warned about Snowmageddon 2015, a.k.a. Winter Storm Juno. There’s nothing worse than filling your house with milk and bread and then getting nothing, nada, no snow at all. This go-round, it was Juno’s younger brother, Jonas, who was going to maroon us in our homes for weeks with no cable, no heat, just our broods of starving children. We all dutifully went scurrying for snow shovels and staples as the chorus of climatic Cassandras swelled to a roar. But there was still that small voice of doubt lurking in our heads.

This time, the prognosticators got it right. It was the storm of the century — so far, at least. The wind blew; the snow swirled; kids and dogs romped. There were skiiers on the Parkway and sledding in Fairmount Park. The Temple women’s gymnastic team, stranded for the night on the Turnpike, used their super-flexibility to get comfy on their bus’s hard seats. It was a grand East Coast holiday, one of those rare occasions when we feel at one with all mankind, when we virtuously help our neighbors with the shoveling, when Nature reasserts its supremacy and we all are forced to just … slow … down!

Our only quarrel? That this Snowpocalypse hit on a weekend. What, not even one day off from work and school?

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