I KNOW how cold you are. I've seen you out there with your galoshes and gloves, scarves and stiff red faces. I've seen you curse the ice that drags you to the ground in a slippery heap. I've seen you outside bracing any minimally exposed skin against the sharp winds that drive through the Arctic air.
That's still no excuse, however, for why I haven't seen you anywhere else on Grounds.
As the snow continues to make front-page headlines bigger than Watergate, the southeast seems almost paralyzed by "The Blizzard of 2000." My brother calls me everyday to proudly announce that there is no school in Northern Virginia, and anchormen continue to interview senior citizens in the hopes of gleaning a brilliant and revolutionary insight about how the weather is affecting them besides, "It makes my arthritis act up."
On Grounds, there is no less whining. Students refuse to lug their warm bodies out of their homes unless they have to go to class, reluctant to bundle up because of the effort involved in dressing warmer than a "South Park" character. Weather-related news regular heads the front page of The Cavalier Daily. Everything is deserted by afternoon, as students speed walk home, angrily calling Mother Nature something a little less respectful than Mother under their breaths.
Maybe we would go out more if we had pacifiers and strollers, because we are all big babies. I'm no less guilty of this lazy insistence on doing as little as possible and eating as much as possible as if in hibernation. I can't even imagine what I'd do if I went to school in a colder place. Would I still be stubborn and lethargic, or would I just accept the weather and not try constantly to work around it? In Chicago, the temperature has been below zero almost every night for the past month. In Rochester, N.Y., the ground has been covered with several feet of snow since November.
Although the snow is making our spoiled Southern tootsies a little chillier than usual, in reality we don't have much to complain about. Put things in context. Consider the weather forecast from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis this week. Thursday: Blizzard. Low 0 to -5. East wind around 20 mph. Chance of snow near 100 percent. Friday: Total storm accumulation of 10 to 12 inches likely. Highs in the low teens. Chance of snow 80 percent.
Suddenly, our own gripes seem less justified. Compared to areas that are facing actual winters, the forecast for Grounds this week looks like a day at the beach.
Tuesday: Mostly sunny. Highs 40 to 45.
Wednesday: Mostly sunny. Highs in the low 40s. And although at actual beaches like Honolulu the low was 72 and the high was 81 this week, for most of the continental United States it has just been a matter of cold or colder.
The South gets agitated when something besides rain falls from the sky, but when put in perspective, this snow has just skimmed the surface of past storms that have really pelted the area below the Mason-Dixon line.
For example, when the Blizzard of 1993 - one of the 10 worst snow storms in American history according to The Weather Channel - hit the eastern seaboard, the Southeast received a record-breaking 20 inches of snow.
"In the Southeast, that was more snow than a lot of people had seen in their entire lifetime," said Paul Kocin, Winter Weather Expert at The Weather Channel on the channel's Web site (http://www.weather.com/weather_center/special_report/sotc/storm3/page1.html). There were 270 storm-related deaths. Interstate highways north of Atlanta were shutdown. For the first time, every major airport on the East Coast had to close at one time or another because of the storm. The three days of snow fall provided so much snow that the roads could not be plowed at all. Now that's a snowstorm. This year's flurries have been what some people in other parts of the country just call "winter."
So don't worry - it's getting warmer and now you have puddles of water to curse rather than snow. The next time a "blizzard" hits though, don't get so panicky.
It's only a little snow.
(Diya Gullapalli's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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