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"Mammoth Snow Storm" Underwhelms
mi (197448) writes You heard the scare-mongering, you heard the governors and mayors closing public transit and declaring driving on public roads a crime. But it turned out to have been a mistake. Boston may have been hit somewhat, but further South — NYC and Philadelphia — the snowfall was rather underwhelming. Promised "2-3 feet" of snow, NYC got only a few inches. Is this an example of "better safe than sorry," or is government's overreach justified by questionable weather models exceeding the threshold of an honest mistake?
This isn't just media. Every decision made can be easily second guessed. The media does it and tons of "savvy" citizens on the Internet do the same thing. There is second guessing even when the call was made right.
If the failure went the other way and thousands were stranded or killed the EXACT SAME group of people would be bitching.
I've got 20 inches and it's still going. I might not get three feet, but the total will be in the neighborhood of the forecasts.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
NYC might have only received a few inches, but Nassau County got 12 - 18 inches and Suffolk County got over 20 inches (and still snowing)... And Connectiut and the rest of New England got even more. The forecast for Suffolk County was consistently in the 20 to 30 inch range, so they got that right. Having hundreds or thousands of people stuck in a blizzard on the Long Island Expressway would have been a disaster.
It doesn't matter what the mayor's office does to prepare for an emergency, there will always be someone there to say they were wrong to do it.
In N.Y., Gov. Cuomo didn't want a repeat of last year when people got trapped overnight in a snowstorm on the Long Island Expressway, so he shut it and all unnecessary road travel down, which was later lifted. Politicians know to act proactively when it comes to acts of Mother Nature, or suffer the backlash of voters later.
They actually do this, just the reporters strip that out.
Not a sentence!
In central mass north of Worcester I have gotten 3 feet and it is continuing to fall.
There is so much snow I have no where to put it.
The storm is highly variable too. 15 miles due north of me they have gotten 6 ".
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
This.
I grew up in the DC metro area. Snowstorms in New England are notoriously hard to predict, especially nor'easters like this one (which are typically a combination of 2-3 storm systems).
Sure, you can see it coming down from the Midwest, but it's always hard to tell exactly what's going to happen to a blizzard after it stumbles over the Appalachian Mountains, which will divert some of it and squeeze some or all of the moisture out of it. Then it collides with some storm full of rain coming in from the North Atlantic. Then the wildcard is some sort of warmer air coming up from the south... It all collides over New England. The computer models can tell you what's going into the mix, but who knows exactly where it's going to transition from rain to snow? WHICH STORM WILL WIN?! A butterfly in Miami decides.
The annual economic output of New York metro area alone (leaving Philadelphia aside for a minute) is about $1.4 trillion dollars — or about $4billion per day (weekdays such as today produce more than weekends). If even a mere 10% of that figure was lost today because of our rulers' failures, the cost is $400 million (for New York alone).
Little of such damage can be meaningfully prevented by shutting the infrastructure down. But even if it could be — and even the entire $60 million cost of the "Christmas Blizzard of 2010" could've been prevented by shutting the city down, it would've still been a pretty stupid thing to do — even if the storm actually lived up to the hype.
The "Christmas Blizzard of 2010" is imputed with 7 fatalities — or, in dollar terms, $63 million dollar, tops.
Hundreds vs. tens of millions of dollars lead to the exact opposite conclusion.
But there is more — individuals and businesses, made aware of the risks, can (and are supposed to!) make their own decisions. Governor declaring driving on a public road a crime is something else — they violate our freedom.
So, where do you sing?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.