Bleepin' Blizzards!

The snowstorm predicted for today earlier this week isn't the major storm it was originally thought to be.

It's worse.

My area of New Jersey is under a blizzard warning, and though my town borders a county "merely" under a winter storm warning, which originally led me to believe that it wouldn't necessarily be as bad as areas farther south, that's only a technicality.  The truth is that my town was expected to get maybe nine inches of snow.  It could be much more than that.  We're still expected to get the least severe of the sustained winds, but thanks to increased forecasts for wind gust speeds, none of that matters - hence the blizzard warning.

Climate change has brought about more frequent winter storms of such severity, not to mention, somewhat ironically, payback for the warmer weather we'd had this past month.  The totals above may be optimistic, as they are expected to climb as the storm moves more farther north than it was originally expected to.

And I was worried about an ice storm?

I don't need this.  Now under a threat for a thirty-fifth power outage since November 2009, a momentary outage having hit my house last week (to those who would count thirty-four outages should another occur, let me explain: I originally began counting outages from February 2010, but I forgot one from three months earlier than that, hence the adjusted count - that means we haven't had an outage-free year, calendar or otherwise, since the twelve-month period beginning November 2008), my mother and I are already dealing with a kitchen remodeling that should have been done long ago but may not be finished until March, even as my car is due back from the repair shop later in the following week (when another storm might hit) rather than sooner.  It's only three weeks into the new year, and I'm already prepared to write it off; I'm not getting anywhere.

Stick around - I may be back soon. :-O