Tuesday, February 01, 2011

'sno Joke: Horrible, Terrible Snow and Hideous Ice

OK, the main thing you need to know right now is that horrible icy weather has canceled nearly 1,200 departures and arrivals flights as of early afternoon in ... Dallas-Fort Worth. The airport was closed for hours this morning and is only now getting some flight operations back.

It's also hideous as you look north and east. Chicago O'Hare had 1,023 canceled flights as of mid-morning. Even where the weather hasn't yet deteriorated severely yet, airlines are preemptively scrubbing flights. The hilariously named Newark Liberty International Airport has 678 cancellations so far; Kennedy has 445; La Guardia has 611. The numbers come as usual from FlightStats.com, and I have only begun to count.

A truly miserable, hideous, dangerous, awful snow-and-ice storm hit a significant portion of the United States today. (Hey, this climate change stuff is a liberal-Nazi-socialist-Trilateral Commission-lamestream-media-Commie hoax, right?).

The worst air-travel week of the year is upon us.

By the way: If, like me, you live in a nice sunny place where the only snow you ever see is high, high on a mountaintop where in my opinion it belongs -- here is some friendly advice. Do not, repeat not, kid around with anyone in the snowbound regions, whether Chicago, New York, Boston or elsewhere, about their miserable, cold, snow-plagued winter.

I did that, very lightly, yesterday with a usually cheerful, optimistic young woman from New York who I was speaking with on the phone about a column I was writing. I made a little joke about snow.

"How's the weather in Tucson?" she asked me glumly.

"Beautiful, sunny and warm as usual," I said.

She considered this and then said darkly, "Yeah, but you could get shot in the f---ing head there, of course."

Whoa, first time I ever heard her curse.

###

No comments: