Much Ado About Nothing

Jim has been in Texas since January 1st. He planned to come back to Michigan the past two weekends, but decided to hold off until he could stay for longer than just a Saturday and Sunday. (As you might have guessed, his idea is to coordinate his trip back home with a working stint in the old Troy office so the company will spring for his airfare.) Instead of just sitting around waiting for that to happen, Jacob and I agreed that we were eager to see the new carpet and staircase (and Jim, of course) at the Houston house, so we decided to drive down there. We packed up the CRV with lots of stuff that we needed at the southern homestead, and hit the road on Friday. Our intention was to travel to Richie's parent's house in southeast Missouri to spend the night, and then continue to Houston on Saturday. As luck would have it, a major winter storm raged across the central United States beginning Thursday afternoon, putting a real snag into our itinerary.

I spent most of Thursday on the internet checking weather and traffic sites, and talking to my handy-dandy meteorologist son. Adam helped me figure out the location and timing of the storm. It was fairly massive. It was racing across Oklahoma towards the east coast, dropping freezing rain and 6 to 10 inches of snow everywhere in its path. We assumed that there would be a better chance for the roads to be cleared sooner to the west, so we canceled our stay with Richie's folks. After all was said and done, we stayed in St. Louis on Friday night (north of the storm), then continued to Houston via southwest Missouri on Saturday. Although there was snow on the ground from St. Louis all the way until we hit the Texas border, the interstate freeways were absolutely clear and dry. So, despite ominous warnings on every department of transportation website, we used our intuition and assumed that the southerners were simply overreacting. And they were - big time. I do understand that, yes, they are not used to heavy snowfalls, and, yes, they are not equipped to handle winter weather as well as we are up north. But to recommend that people stay off of the "dangerous, treacherous, and impassible roads & freeways" when they were completely clear was a bit much. If these folks were in charge of roadways in northern states, people would never get anything done all winter long because they would be encouraged to stay home each time more than an inch of snow fell. Well, now that I think about it, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing after all!