Right now, a major snowstorm is pounding Northeast of the United States, with up to 36 inches of snow expected in less than two days. (For those readers who live in the countries with metric system, this is just short of a meter, and for those readers who live in Canada, this is just short of average.) Since this blizzard is expected to be one of the biggest snowstorms of the last few decades, proper preparation is crucial. Here are 10 tips on how to survive this snowstorm.
1) Stockpile salt, shovels, snacks, stews, sweaters, socks, sleeping bags, snowshoes, skis, and any other stuff starting with the letter “S”.
2) For your safety, stay off the roads. If you have had any experience driving alongside New York or Boston drivers, you know that this advice is relevant in any weather.
3) Entertain yourself by using your smartphone and Internet to post status updates and rants on how science is wrong about the global warming and how it has never been even the least bit useful for anything.
4) Invest in a snow-blower. During the snowstorm, the price of the snow-blowers skyrockets and if you cash in at the right time, you could earn a tidy return on your money.
5) Stay warm. The best way to stay warm is to be active, and shoveling snow out of your driveway, then jumping out of the way as a passing snowplow pushes the snow right back into your driveway, then shoveling the snow back into the street, and so on, and so on, is a perfect way to stay warm because it will easily keep you active for 30-40 hours or more.
6) Make sure to stockpile plenty of extra ice for the refrigerator, because if your house loses power, there’ll be no place to get more ice in the middle of a blizzard.
7) Keep your phone, tablet, and laptop turned off to save the battery for emergencies, and also because no one needs to see your Tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram photos of snow. And yes, I am aware that no two snowflakes are alike.
8) Buy plenty of food for your pet. Trust me, you will not regret this when you run out of food before your pet does.
9) Since it’s now too late to do anything for this snowstorm, make a mental note to properly prepare for the next one.
10) Suddenly recall this mental note several hours after the start of the next snowstorm.
What about you? Do you have any suggestions or Instagram pictures of pretty snowflakes?
List of X 
Reblogged this on The Fifth Column and commented:
Excellent article…
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Thank you for the reblog!
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Ha! Too funny X. Love it. being one of those Canadians for whom this is normal, I concur on all your points. We have had some dandy storms that boggle the mind. We had an ice storm in 1998 that basically shut down Ontario (about 5 million of our 12 million people) for weeks and some for a month or more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Nt7elma0Q Baking muffins on woodstoves was popular. ha! i was lucky as I lived in a new neighborhood with all the power lines underground – we lost power at home for about 2 hours.
We go through this whole stocking up routine whenever a storm is predicted and the store shelves are emptied. The retailers love it. I’m surprised that American business hasn’t latched onto that one yet. Hmmm, if we can just create global warming then we can sell more inventory when people “stock-up”. Mwahahaha! We can drop the best before date on water to two weeks so they have to rebuy it everytime. And make shovels that wear out after 10 uses; and sell generators to power the homes, generators that require regular repair and /or replacement and also require stock piles of gasoline. We could even put a best before date on gasoline – imagine that! Oh, the possibilities are endless.
Great post X. Hope this storm doesn’t hurt anyone.
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I remember that. Ont. is where I’m from originally.
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Yeah, that was a doozy wasn’t it Gibber? I never saw anything like that before or after. I’ve seen worse in very small areas but never that affected millions. My favorite part is where you see those steel power towers falling like kids toys. I was managing a fleet of trucks that delivered to a retail chain at the time and we literally had to map where the power lines were across the roads and plan runs that way. Some runs took two days to get to stores that were two hours away as we had to go hundred sof miles out of the way to get access. That was a head shaker..
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It was crazy for sure. Wow what a hassle for you eh?
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I’m not so sure whether our retailers love the snowstorms or not: on one hand, they sell out all the bread, milk, eggs, and toilet paper (apparently, those are the things you’re supposed to buy before a snowstorm). On the other hand, no one comes shopping the next day.
But I’m sure they’d love your idea of shortening expiration periods. And why not just put expiration date on the generator itself, and on the shovel?
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And I remember a couple of ice storms too, but none quite as bad as one you described.
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Hey did you know X that there is an expiration date on those plastic hard hats that are worn around construcition sites?. I got thrown out of one one day because my hard hat was expired. Ha! It turns out that the plastic reacts to ultraviolet light and becomes brittle after being out in the sun for a few years. Who knew?
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If you think about it, that makes perfect sense. Except… with all the kinds of plastics out there, why would you make a hard hat out of one that becomes brittle in the sunlight?
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Cost
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Reblogged this on The Militant Negro™.
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Thank you for the reblog!
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Always my pleasure, X
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This makes my List of Your Ten Best Lists. Love the photograph. Stay safe and have fun.
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Thank you. I can work from home so I can easily stay safe – assuming the house doesn’t lose power. 🙂
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Proper planning for the storm of the century of the week should include filling your cart at the liquor store. Shoveling snow isn’t experienced in its purest form without a hangover.
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You’re might be right, but I recommend not overdoing it with liquor, since there is a possibility that you sober up and realize that you’ve shoveled somebody else’s driceway.
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Some call that an act of neighborly goodwill, unless you accidentally shovel their lawn and flowerbed, then it’s just embarrassing.
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With all this snow, it’s really hard to tell the sidewalk from lawn or flowerbed. So for the first few hours after the snowstorm, the sidewalk is whatever place that has the thinnest snow cover.
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I wish I’d known that before I shoveled the Braunsberg’s flower bed.
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If you care to scroll down to the bottom of the comments, I posted a picture of how that snowstorm looked up here.
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Rely on the weather forecasts missing the prediction … after all, it worked in Manhattan!
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Mayor DeBlasio’s hysterics seem all the more funny in retrospect. Better safe than sorry but that doesn’t preclude me from laughing.
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… and the mayor is more than happy that Manhattan was spared.
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Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?
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Understandable … but I do love those can’t miss forecasts, especially when they miss.
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The forecast didn’t exactly miss the prediction. All it missed was where said prediction came true: it came true in New England, because we did get the promised 2-3 feet.
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Yep … Manhattan missed it by 50 miles … but the rest of the NE … ouch. BTW … your location? … (which I don’t know)
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I don’t need no stinkin’ snow blower. I’ve got The Pythons. My left and right arms. No snow yet has proven a fair match for them.
The forecast was a bust. Only 6″ instead of 24″. Ah, well. Better safe than sorry. Plus, I get to work from home. Now, where’d I leave that bong?
At what point does pet food become food pet? Ask the Donner part!
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Whatever snow missed you in New York and NJ has now landed here in New England.
So I just spent two hours shoveling the snow – an hour out of necessity and an hour just for fun and exercise, shoveling random peoples’ sidewalks.
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Reblogged this on spiritandanimal.wordpress.com.
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Thank you for the reblog!
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11) Move to Brazil 🙂
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That’s an excellent idea. Too bad they’ve cancelled all the flights out of here. 🙂
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Gotta’ think ahead, my friend… follow the sun.
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If I were thinking ahead, I would have at least posted this before the blizzard. 🙂
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Valid point
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You forgot one – invest in a generator for when the power goes off and the snow is so deep the utility truck can’t get down the street for days. Of course, it’s a little difficult to get to that generator so as to start it, because it’s in the back yard and the recommended X number of feet from the house, where the snow has now reached 5 feet. But once you do get it started, you can charge up the microwave so you can eat again.
Knock on wood – this storm has not reached Buffalo, NY. We’ve only had about 3 inches of snow so far today.
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You’re in Buffalo, NY, the snow capital of the country? You must be laughing at all the panicky New Yorkers and New Englanders making such a huge fuss over some puny double-digit snowfall. 🙂
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Well, I did start off scoffing at 3-4 feet of snow. But then I heard about the 75-80 mph winds – and believe me, that makes a huge difference.
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The worst part is that it makes shoveling snow before the end of the snowstorm completely pointless, because all it does is creating trenches in which the snowdrifts would grow.
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I do wish the East coast well, yes I do, as I enjoy basking in the sun.
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Since you’ve already had your share of blizzards, I’d say you’ve earned it.
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#1 and #5 are sooo sport on.
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I’ve just tested out #5, and it totally works.
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6.5) Make sure your AC unit has enough freon to get you through the storm. You do NOT want to be caught without climate control during a white-out.
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That’s a good idea. If I’m already staying warm by shoveling snow, I certainly wouldn’t want to overheat at home because of the broken AC.
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1. Move to San Diego…
2. Oh wait… that’s all there is…
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Except that you get earthquakes, droughts, and wildfires.
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none of which are cold
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I really don’t miss this about living in Boston.
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I still don’t mind shoveling snow. But I’d probably be more concerned about droughts, earthquakes, and wildfires.
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Re #3 – I suppose that the 70 degree weather here in Boulder, CO proves that global warming science is correct!!!
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I guess the weather in Colorado also proves that winter and snow are just a worldwide climatologist conspiracy.
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It’s too bad we don’t get that kinda weather here.
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“Too bad”? My car was barely peeking through the snowdrifts this evening, and it’s still snowing pretty hard.
I’d think that the fact you don’t get that kind of weather should be its own ten things of thankful 🙂
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I kinda like snow.
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I made the brilliant decision to keep the trampoline up over the winter, which of course means I have to shovel that too! While shoveling a number of people came by on cross country skis, one guy riding a snow board down the street…but yeah, after experiencing something like number 5, the snowblower is getting very tempting…
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Can’t you just jump on the trampoline so that the snow just gets? If you’re concerned about the extra weight of the snow, you could hire a kid to do that.
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How about build a snowman? Go skiing, snow shoe,snowmobile…
This is a light snowfall you’re getting compared to what we get up here in Northern Alberta..lol
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I’d love to go skiing. If I hadn’t just spent couple of hours shoveling this light snowfall, I’d put on the skis and ski right down Main St.
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That I’d love to see!
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I see snow, I think run, run south, run to the sun. But as usual you do so much better than I do.
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I see snow, I think yay, ski season is on! Although few months into the snow season, I may start thinking just like you.
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Given what a let-down the snowstorm actually was, this list should have only gone to 8.
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I wouldn’t exactly call this a letdown. This snowbank is my car:
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Break out the snowboard!!!!
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Woah ponies!!! Dang, that’s a lot of shoveling X. Stay safe and warm.
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At least unlike that guy who walks 21 miles each day, I’m lucky to have a car I can dig out. 🙂
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I do have advice re: snowstorms. Procreate and breed (I guess they are more or less the same thing). Seriously, in Canadaland, we do our best reproductive activity during the worst snowstorms, as what the heck else are we supposed to do? There’s no point in shoveling, you’re just going to get buried up again. Cable’s probably out. And it’s only a matter of time before the power’s gone. So light up a candle. Chug some wine. And have at it. September babies, baby!
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That’s a tempting idea, but we’re still expected to show up at work the next day. It’s probably why here in the states there is an increase in population in the southern states, but not in the North – it’s because we get too exhausted from all the shoveling.
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You guys work too hard.
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We don’t get the socialized medicine like you do.
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And nor do you pay our taxes and have to work that second job to stay out of the stink.
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Good post. I learn something new and challenging on sites I stumbleupon on a daily basis.
It’s always helpful tto read thrrough confent from other writers and practice something from theeir websites.
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They are getting slammed again. And the weatherman said they there is another one brewing after this one too. Whew, that’s a lot of snow.
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After Monday’s snowstorm, my car again looked just like that picture, only with more snow on top. And there is more snow coming tomorrow and then this weekend, and then next week.
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11. Liquor. I recommend things served hot like Bombardinos, Hot Buttered Rum, and other memory-erasers. You may lose your job but you’ll be very relaxed about it.
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But how would I keep buying liquor when I no longer have a job? It’s a Catch-22 situation.
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If you’re scruffy enough, there’s panhandling. If you’re hot enough, there’s rich women with low self-esteem.
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Be grateful to the almighty that snowmen do NOT come assembled!
I found twin snowflakes once but they melted before I could get proof. 😦
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You da (Frozen) Man, X!
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