I paced back and forth. Up and down the block, under the cover of a hotel awning. Weary to venture out. Is that black ice? Can high-powered snowflakes kill? If you get hit by a snowplow, do they just shove you in a snow bank and leave you until the city thaws? <\/p>\n
No Floridian should be here. In an epic spring-time storm. A winter-esque blizzard that even the northerners freaked out about. They were careful on the roads. They skipped work and school. They shutdown trains and fired up snow blowers. They sprinkled salt everywhere, even on their salads. And they mourned the tulips they had planted the week before when it was 60 degrees and supposed to be spring. <\/p>\n
Ha!<\/p>\n
This was a Noreaster, combining with a polar blast of snow cutting across the Midwest. They called it Stella. A she-devil who was supposed to bring 12-18 inches of snow to New York City. I was there for a College Media Conference. It seemed like a good thing to attend \u2026 until I learned their HIGH temperatures wouldn\u2019t crack the lowest I had seen all year. <\/p>\n
Um \u2026 ha?<\/p>\n
I paced back and forth, trying to decide whether to trudge into those cotton-candy whiffs of white drifting down. Piling up on the street like someone shaking powdered sugar all over the city. <\/p>\n
To trudge out into it or not to trudge? That is a Floridian\u2019s question. <\/p>\n
But no Floridian \u2014 not one who had been through a hurricane last year \u2014 could live with himself if he didn\u2019t trudge.
\nSo, I went. To learn many new things about winter weather, and to remember lessons I had long since forgotten.
\n<\/p>\n
Like this: Taste a snowflake with your tongue, but never with your eyeballs. And certainly not if it\u2019s sleet racing along in 25 mph winds. <\/p>\n
Leave no cracks between your scarf and coat. Not a crack! Because 15 pounds of sleet will pile up there and trickle down your back in a spine-tingling horror show. It will feel like being struck by lightning! <\/p>\n
Realize this: If it looks like a puddle of water, good money says it probably IS a puddle of water. Freezing cold slush water. Deep water. And when it\u2019s 30 degrees outside, you could do a lot of things, but one of those should NEVER, EVER be stepping in it. In God\u2019s name, man, WHY would you step in it?!? <\/p>\n
Most of all, when you\u2019re sitting in the hotel lobby with a soaking wet foot and the barista says something like, \u201cIt\u2019s not so bad! I don\u2019t know why they made such a big deal,\u201d resist the urge to kill him and bury him in a snow bank. <\/p>\n
Because he\u2019s a northerner and he\u2019s used to this. And and you\u2019re just a Floridian with frostbite on your eyeballs. But at least you\u2019re going home where it\u2019s warm, and you can grow tulips any time of the year you like. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I paced back and forth. Up and down the block, under the cover of a hotel awning. Weary to venture out. Is that black ice? Can high-powered snowflakes kill? If you get hit by a snowplow, do they just shove you in a snow bank and leave you until the city thaws? No Floridian should be here. In an epic spring-time storm. A winter-esque blizzard that even the northerners freaked out about. They were careful on the roads. They skipped work and school. They shutdown trains and fired up snow blowers. They sprinkled salt everywhere, even on their salads. And they mourned the tulips they had planted the week before when it was 60 degrees and supposed to be spring. Ha! This was a Noreaster, combining with a polar blast of snow cutting across the Midwest. They called it Stella. A she-devil who was supposed to bring 12-18 inches of snow to New York City. I was there for a College Media Conference. It seemed like a good thing to attend \u2026 until I learned their HIGH temperatures wouldn\u2019t crack the lowest I had seen all year. Um \u2026 ha? I paced back and forth, trying to decide whether to trudge into those cotton-candy whiffs of white drifting down. Piling up on the street like someone shaking powdered sugar all over the city. To trudge out into it or not to trudge? That is a Floridian\u2019s question. But no Floridian \u2014 not one who had been through a hurricane last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571,565,569],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-nutshells","category-travel","category-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1566,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions\/1566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}