Everything You Need to Know About This Storm

Here in central Virginia we have been promised a snow storm beginning sometime tonight and lasting through Tuesday morning. As is often the case with winter storms in Virginia, these forecasts come with more codicils and disclaimers than a Hollywood prenup. We are reminded by our intrepid meteorologists that there are many very complicated factors with the storm which could go either way and depending on other equally mysterious conditions, the predicted outcomes could vary widely. So we are left with forecasts designed to give the forecaster lots of wiggle room should his/her predictions wind up being off the mark. I have taken the liberty of combining all the various forecasts in play from the local television stations, the Weather Channel, several weather apps as well as a couple fake weathermen on Facebook, into one overarching forecast that should cover all the bases:

Snow/sleet/freezing rain will start somewhere between 7:00 and 10:00 tonight and continue throughout the night until around 4:00 Monday morning when it most likely will change over to freezing rain/sleet/snow, then inexplicably change over to all rain for a brief period between 15 minutes and 3 hours, before finally switching back over to all snow around noon lasting for God knows how long before finally stopping in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. It should be mentioned that there may be a brief cessation of precipitation of any kind during a devilishly tricky DRY SLOT appearance at some impossible to predict moment. Or not.  Nevertheless, total accumulations of snow/sleet/freezing rain will be in a range between 2-85 inches.

To get ahead of this storm Pam did what all self-respecting Richmonders do when faced with the possibility of instant death brought on by a snowstorm power outage—she went to the grocery store to stock up on all the essentials. This list of must-haves includes but is not limited to: toilet paper, milk, eggs, bread, eye-liner, beans, chicken broth, pot roast, Beano, mascara, bottled water, bicarbonate of soda, Imodium, air freshener, and a bag of cheese puffs. There are very important reasons for each of these items, although I’m not totally sure I know what the eye-liner and mascara are all about. It probably has something to do with the fact that if the storm outperforms the predictions and were to dump, let’s say—12 inches on us, that would mean a walk in the neighborhood with Lucy which would mean pictures would be taken and the last thing you want in snow-frolicking pictures are tired looking eyes, am I right?

Of course the best part of this storm will be the postmortems afterwards. The one meteorologist’s forecast which turns out to be the most accurate will bestow on him/her bragging rights around town until the next storm comes through. We can all only hope that the winner doesn’t wind up being that blowhard facebook clown who was first to introduce trash-talking into the weather forecasting business a couple of decades ago from a computer terminal somewhere in his Mom’s basement. Now he’s turned his shtick into an actual business that people pay money for. Only in American, my friends. Only in America.

So, as I finish this up it’s 6:15 Sunday evening. So far no snow/sleet/freezing rain to report. But we’ve got plenty of toilet tissue at the ready and we got a pot roast planned for dinner tomorrow night.