"Bomb cyclone" storm.
When I was a kid in South Dakota, the local paper, the Argus-Leader, once per winter would run a picture on the front page of someplace south of us (I remember it as always being Enid, Oklahoma, but I suppose they changed it from year to year) that was paralyzed by what to us was an absurdly small amount of snow. This photo from Charleston, SC, reminded me of that. My South Carolina friend was a little indignant when I told him I'd practically gotten a hernia in my jaw laughing at the hysterical language ("wallop" "ventured out" & "dump" on a different pic). And I do know, as he pointed out, that it's unusual for them to get snow & they don't know how to handle it. I nonetheless find it funny, because a lot of snow seems like the natural way of things—one of those things so obvious in childhood that you never quite can believe elsewise. Our school superintendent in Sioux Falls would only authorize a snow day if he couldn't make it around his block. Willis driving several hours to be in the thick of today's snow is so different from my upbringing as to be head-shaking. "I don't want snow—I want snow HERE," I wrote in my long poem "Snowbound." I love snow but I don't think I would go anywhere for it. In fact, right now I'm thinking more about breakfast than getting dressed & going out.