Behold the Snowpocalypse

Jared Keller Feb 5, 2010

Snowpocalypse is here. While East Coast newspapers are busy warning citizens of the impending 22-28 inches of snow swirling towards Washington, New York, and Boston, others are freaking out about the impending white-out. Five highlights of what you certainly don't need to know to prepare:

  • Snow Will Trigger Volcanoes Joel Achenbach at the Washington Post envisions chaos - "I believe the technical term is Hobbesian" - of cinematic proportions: "It's going to be like a Roland Emmerich movie. There will be so much snow that it will destabilize the earth's crust. Hidden volcanoes will erupt in once-tranquil neighborhoods. There will be devastation followed by obliteration."
  • Scrapple Will Be Sold Out John Micek pokes fun at the survivalist mentality in his Capital Ideas blog: "Being a hearty New England type by birth, we can't help but chuckle when we see our Pennsylvania neighbors flooding the supermarkets, where they clear the shelves of milk, bread, cheese, Kraft Dinner, and, inexplicably, of all the Scrapple within arm's length, at the slightest hint of snow. Indeed, we watched with some amusement at the supermarket last night as folks behaved as sensibly and rationally as you might expect at reports of snow, falling quite seasonably, in early February. We'd stopped by the pick up a few essentials -- a hearty loaf of bread, some ginger ale and the latest edition of Survivalist Monthly to help us through the storm."
  • Snow May Cause You to Overeat Ann Posegate with the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang focusing on food choices in the impending snow isolation: "Cold temperatures make us more hungry, since our bodies use more energy to stay warm. Take the South Pole, for example. Staff and scientists there consume 3,000 to 6,000 calories each day during winter just to maintain their body weight (most still end up losing 10 to 15 pounds by the end of the season)...Being stuck indoors this weekend does not mean we must under-eat, overeat or eat unhealthily."
  • El Niño Is to Blame. This Is Actually True. NPR's Frank James is less focused on surviving the storm than blaming the consequence on everybody's favorite weather system: "The winter storm heading to the East Coast this Super Bowl weekend, a weather system expected to drop nearly two feet of snow in the Mid-Atlantic region, is all about El Nino."

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