&@$% Snow!
January 29th, 2009Posted in Skiing in the Tetons
It seems there are a lot of people cursing the gorgeous white snow (and rain and ice) that Mother Nature bestowed upon them yesterday. When I saw yesterday morning’s national radar image showing a wide blue band running from the Ozarks to the New York-Canada border, I was impressed by it, and thought, “How’d they get so lucky?”
Today, the national news is full of stories about storm caused deaths (23) and millions of homes and businesses without power. I feel for the families of the dead and for those left without heat, but I’m a little dumbfounded that a perfectly normal winter storm can cause so much disruption. Highway departments and utility companies have been dealing with storms like this every year since power lines were first strung across the East about a century ago. It seems there is a pretty slow learning curve at play here. If a winter snow and ice storm was only an every ten or twenty year event, perhaps the lack of planning for it might be excusable, but these storms happen every winter- sometimes several times a winter, with the same resulting chaos.
Economic stimulus plans are big news today too. How about spending the money right now to make the rest of the East coast (and Mid-west) as able to deal with winter storms as say, Syracuse and Chicago are? Former Chicago resident Obama and his daughters are scoffing at Washington D.C.’s response to 3″ of snow. If Chicago and Syracuse closed down everytime they got 3,” not much would get done in those cities in the winter. Here in the Teton’s we’ve been getting a foot or two a week lately and life, and school, goes on quite well. Yeah, school was closed a couple of days ago, but that was because of -20 and -30 degree temps, not snow or ice. Wimpy kids, when I was their age…
I like trees better than most people, and I know a lot of the problems in the East is from the damage falling ice ladened tree limbs cause to powerlines, so I am loath to suggest that utilities do more tree trimming than they already do. It seems pretty obvious that greater electrical use is in everyone’s future as the nation finally weens itself off traditional fuels for home heating and powering our vehicles. The technological focus on updating our electric grid is on tansporting electricity efficiently from places rich in solar and wind energy resources to the distant cities. Perhaps while we are doing that upgrade, we should upgrade the local distribution lines to storm proof them. Climatologists are predicting that global warming will continue to increase the number and the severity of storms. I understand that with housing construction in the pits, there might be a few electricians looking for useful work. Humm…
Meanwhile, some wily weathermen got a local prediction right yesterday when they said they expected the west side of the Tetons to benefit from geography and pick up some extra snow. While the Jackson side of the mountains got about a half a foot of new snow, Grand Targhee scooped up more than a foot. On both sides of the range, thanks to the cold temps, the powder was nice and light and dry. Good stuff!
TSLS (Tired Skier Leg Syndrome) must be spreading these days. With a seductive snow report, Targhee’s parking lot was inexcusably empty yesterday at 8:30. After its pitiful excuse for a liftline disappeared once Dreamcatcher was boarding skiers, nothing impeded enjoying intoxicating laps in the deep snow (actually, at the lower elevations at the Ghee yesterday, the snow was a lot deeper than just a foot!) except a bit of gratuitous summit fog. Good lines of untrack snow could be found even at noon.
So while the foot or so of snow that landed on New England was making headlines, the foot or two that landed on Targhee was making smiles.
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