Dashing Through the Snow

Okay, more like negotiating highway through the snow... supposed to get more white stuff coming up from the south tomorrow. And naturally, we're driving south, right into it. Hopefully we'll be in the Harrisburg area before it gets bad (preferably before it hits at all).

I seriously thought about canceling this trip, but my husband was incredulous when I said that. He doesn't see a few inches of snow as a deterrent from anything. Crazy northerners...
I'm thinking about Rte 15, which is full of insane drivers on a good day, and city traffic once we get there. I'm not keen on being in either place in snow. The good news is that it isn't supposed to start until after lunch, by which time I hope to be safely inside the Farm Show Complex, drooling over pontoon boats and custom rifle stocks and Alaska sightseeing excursions. The other good news (?) is that we're only supposed to get a few inches... this can be good or bad. On one hand, that's enough to either be a nuisance or make the roads slippery as all-get-out. On the other hand, our local weather forecasters have a lower accurate prediction rate than Punxsutawney Phil (who is at, I believe, 30-35%). Meaning, we could get anywhere from zero to twelve inches in localspeak.

I wish I'd gone to weather person school. Meteorologists have it made... they study scientific weather phenomena, learn a bunch of technical terms, spend a lot of time on TV pointing out said phenomena using the terms that no one else understands, and get paid beaucoup bucks... and they're wrong half the time and DON'T get fired! What a sweet job that must be.

Heck, I'm more accurate than that... if my husband's hip aches, it's going to be cold. If my hair's frizzy, the air is dry. If I can hear birds outside the window, it's warm. And if it's humid inside, it's raining out. We have a great system at work, too... if we want to know what the weather's like, we go outside and look around. ;-P

Seriously, being a meteorologist would be fun, I think. For me, the best part would be learning and fieldwork. I love studying the sky... am fascinated by storms... have been known to run outside with a camera during a lightning storm or tornado warning... one day last year, as I was leaving work, I heard on the radio that there was a funnel cloud forming not a mile from the road I was on. Anyone who knows me knows exactly what I did... pulled over to watch! I actually wanted to be one of those kamikaze idiot reporters who were on location during hurricanes, yelling into the microphones over the wind and rain and fighting to keep from blowing out of camera range. I wanted to be on the crew that launched "Dorothy" during the movie Twister (up until the end, that is... you can keep the flying cows, thanks!).

That's my alternate-life dream, right there... in a nutshell, I wanna be a stormchaser. How odd, from someone who doesn't even want to drive two hours south because it might snow three inches. *eyeroll* The biggest risks I take nowadays involve driving in the dark through deer territory and the above-mentioned tornado/lightning watching. The latter is because I'm determined to catch one or the other on camera. I WILL get an awesome lightning shot, you just wait and see!