TomFlannery.com

Snow is finally gone…..sorta. Woke up to more shovel-able stuff this morning….but for now at least, the witch appears to be on life support.

She may return Friday. Or Sunday. We’re promised at least 2 days of non-Armageddon, so that’s cool. Folks are still digging out, but in NEPA things like digging out can turn gangsta in an instant. Murder-suicide in Luzerne County and a knife fight in Scranton are already in the books. When we make the national news, we go hardcore.

The rowdy supporters of the Millwall football club in England originated the chant “no one likes us and we don’t care” in the mid-70s, (bizarrely set to the Rod Stewart song “Sailing”…but Rod was GOD in the 70s)…..and that comes to mind at times like these around these here parts. Just once I’d like to make the national news for something other than acting like deranged knobheads. Being the birthplace of the President helped some….but I sure wish Biden stuck around long enough to at least get arrested for underage drinking or something. You know, make some of that Scranton soil STICK bro.

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I decided to go off the grid and get my weather updates from the various weather “experts” on Facebook. They all have cultist followers and exist primarily to shit on the regular TV weather guys. All of them were crowing non-stop how they “pegged” this storm waaaaaay in advance of Snedeker et al….surely proof of some vast meteorological conspiracy. I call them “Weather Bros”, and they are positively masochistic when it comes to predicting how doomed we are every time a front moves in. They appear to put lots of stock in the “European model” because whatever that is invariably predicts that most mayhem. In the end, they’re about right as often as the national weather service is….which means they’re about as right at the guys on TV….because everybody is getting their information from the same place. At the moment they are predicting a plague of snow frogs just in time for the Super Bowl, so keep your eye out for that. (One of the dudes predicted York PA to be the bullseye of this last storm, calling for 40 inches and creating an online panic that was only soothed when the residents of York got 28 inches less than that. Hey, it ain’t as easy as it looks, eh Bubba?)

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The wind is whipping outside my window as I type this, which isn’t unusual at all since for whatever reason this place has turned into Kansas over the last few years. 15 to 20 mph winds are now a light breeze in comparison to the tree-gorging gusts we get on a regular basis. I’m not sure when NEPA went all-out Oz but it really pisses me off because while I can deal with rain and snow and the cold, the wind drives me to crazed distraction. Normal weather seems to slide past our flanks, leaving us with the kind of nonsense that parks itself and pulls out a 6-pack so Jim Cantore has plenty of time to show up with that know-it-all smirk on his face. And there’s always that one ominous tree within striking distance of your house…..and it’s a hoot to lay in bed listening to the gale while contemplating what room it’s gonna crash through. Good times.

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2020 stole the sun, and 2021 isn’t giving it back.

In a bit…

–tf