The White Death Hits Cincinnati

The weather forecasts predicted it for a couple days...everyone knew it was coming...schools were closed or sent kids home early...businesses sent employees home early...and yet the Cincinnati panic associated with a snowstorm (a.k.a. the White Death) hit the city. I took this picture right after I got home. It was right near sunset and the snow was still coming down pretty hard. Click here and here to see a couple other photos. We got 4-5 inches. My usual 15 minute commute took just under 2 hours. Dianne decided to wait it out at work. She went with a couple of colleagues to get some dinner downtown to wait for the snow to pass and the traffic to thin out.

On the way home I was listening to Gary Burbank on xmradio (700 WLW). As I was inching along in traffic, he said something that made me laugh. He said the Cincinnati area has about a million people, but when it snows it seems like about 7 million idiots somehow come out of the woodwork and all of them are out driving a car in the snowstorm. That comment, along with Jim Borgman's Cincinnati snowstorm portfolio he posted today (I love his commute cartoon and the Kentucky snow removal cartoon) made the commute home a little easier to take.

The snow eased up around 8 pm and I took the photo below. It's always peaceful after a big snow. There aren't a lot of people out and about. Any sounds are dampened and the reflected light casts a soft glow on the new snow.

First Snow of the Season

My normal 15-20 minute commute to work took one hour and fifty minutes today. Why? It was the first snowfall in the area. The 1/4 to 1/2 inches of snow throughout the area put Cincinnati drivers into a tizzy. The roads were slippery in spots, but they really weren't that bad. People just aren't used to driving in that and so they were sliding all over. I saw two cars in the ditch in the Mason area and a few fender benders on the way to work. As shown in the Borgman cartoon from last Friday, some areas had the salt trucks out in full force. That helped a lot, but my black car was mostly white with salt by the time I got home. I can't wait for the next snowstorm during rush hour.

Borgman Blog

I like Jim Borgman's editorial cartoons. Even though we don't subscribe to a local paper, I'd occasionally look at his creations. Today I stumbled across Jim Borgman's blog. I found it pretty interesting. Besides showing the cartoons, he will sometimes show sketches that led to the final cartoon and give some background. I thought this cartoon about the TSA's recent antics was pretty funny.

TSA....vigilant, effective, efficient. Yeah, right! I guess that's why a utility knife was found on the seat of a plane going from Philadelphia to Connecticut.

P.S. -- This is my 200th post to the blog!