NaBloPoMo post no. 28: Snowmageddon missed us by 10 miles.

As many of you are aware, I and my family live in the Finger Lakes region. We're at the westernmost part of that area. Not quite Western New York, not quite Central New York, and a scooch too far north to be part of the Southerntier. We are in an awkward position geographically for people to define, unless you are talking football. Then it is everything from Buffalo east to Syracuse is "Bills Country" and even if you don't like football, you're socially expected to be part of the Bill's Mafia. Because Bills.

The Weather Channel made the usual Lake Effect that makes driving through Western New York hazardous this time of year sound like the worst ever. The snow bands from the Great Lakes can reach pretty far inland. We are in this pocket where the snow bands off Lake Erie misses us by about ten miles and the snow band off Lake Ontario miss us by, roughly, another ten miles. And then because of the weird microclimates due to all the hills, we happen to sit in a spot where we don't get nailed too badly when the big storms roll in, usually.

When we hit the latter part of the week where we are suppose to warm up to around forty degrees Fahrenheit, the couple of inches of snow that we got will probably all melt. The real problem for us is this bitter cold and the wind. It has been blowing pretty hard most of the day so far. I suspect the wind chill is about the same as it was in the morning, around 19 deg F. My sons were not happy to wait for the bus in this weather. Only enough snow for one young man to shovel and their hands were very cold despite their good quality gloves. As my eldest said when I told him he could not wait in the apartment for the bus, "I hope you'll be happy when I get frostbite in my hands." He usually doesn't fire off quips like that, but I don't blame him. It was pretty bitter out there.

I told him to wait in the entryway out of the wind. That seemed to mollify him. As someone who gets cold easily and literally hurts like it is burning their flesh, I could empathize with him. Still, I chuckle at what he snapped off. Because about ten seconds later the bus arrived and he left the entryway grumbling.