When it comes to winter storms, I live in an area where it’s easy to get complacent. This isn’t a part of the world that gets big snowstorms every year. Most of the time, we get a few flurries and snow showers that ends up melting in less than a day. It rarely requires shoveling. At most, it just makes the roads a little slick for a day.
But every now and then, we get a major snowstorm. They used to be more common. When I was a kid, we could usually expect at least one moderate storm that would close school for a day or two. But anything beyond six inches of snow was rare. As I got older, those storms became even rarer. By the time I was out of college and living on my own, my area would go years without a major snowstorm.
I admit that made me complacent. It’s been ten years since I dealt with a snowstorm that dumped over a foot of snow on my area. And that particular storm was a historic anomaly that we only see once in a century. After that, I don’t recall any significant snowstorm that wasn’t more than a minor inconvenience.
That changed this past week. Fir the first time in ten years, a major storm hit my area. It was big, disruptive, and caused all sorts of problems that we’re still trying to deal with, as I’m writing this. Like many, I did what I could to prepare. I stocked up on food. I made sure my heater was in working order. I also still had a snow shovel, which I hadn’t had to use in year. I thought that was enough.
I was wrong.
That’s not to say I was in any real danger with this storm. I wasn’t. My food, water, and electricity remained robust through the entire storm. But once it was over and I began digging myself out, I realized that I hadn’t been as proactive as I thought.
For one, that shovel that I rarely used was not as useful as I’d hoped. It was flimsy, cheap, and could not handle the heavier chunks of snow I had to dig out. Also, I somehow lost the scraper I often used for my car when it got icy. That made things a lot harder because my car basically had a turtle shell of snow on it. And after a night where it got below zero, it became very hard in the morning. Scraping it off was a test of strength and patience.
This is also where I remembered that, back in 2016 I wasn’t living alone. I was still living in a shared house with roommates. And one of my roommates happened to have an electric shovel. That wonderful marvel of modern technology did most of the heavy lifting in terms of removing the snow in our shared walkways. Now, I live alone. I don’t have an electric snow shovel. And I learned the hard way that clearing large volumes of snow without it was difficult and not good for my back.
In fact, before I was done digging my car out, I immediately went online to see how much one of those shovels cost. I fully expect to have one ready the next time a snowstorm hits. It may not happen for another ten years. But that doesn’t matter. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not going to be caught unprepared and ill-equipped next time, whenever it comes.
And if you happen to live in an area that gets major snowstorms, even if they’re rare, I encourage you to do the same.
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