"shelter in place"

I have just returned from the grocery store where I snagged THE LAST PACKAGE of ground beef. "Oh am I taking too many?" she asked as she loaded 10 packages into her cart. "It is for my Superbowl Party that probably won't happen."

What is this mania that has taken over Harris Teeter before 7:30 AM on a Friday morning? It is THE WASHINGTON SNOWSTORM. And when you pair that with Superbowl weekend, the only worse scenario I can imagine is if the Redskins were playing in it.

I have been eying this storm for nearly a week as it gathers moisture from as far away as Hawaii. Having been raised in New England, I am pretty low key when it comes to snowstorms, but the absence of sufficient snow removal equipment in the DC area makes this upcoming storm a problem for us, for we were planning to drive north for a ski vacation in Maine tomorrow.

But with email alerts from our local jurisdiction that use the admonition "be prepared to shelter in place for 3-5 days" or the AccuWeather overlay on DC describing accumulation as EXCESSIVE, there is little chance we will get out of here before late Saturday night.I suppose we COULD get out of Dodge this morning, but then we wouldn't be here to shovel the roof off and we need to do that in a snow like this to avoid ice jams and leaking.

So in anticipation of an unplowed street, we are toying with the idea of packing the car this morning and moving it to a street that is more regularly plowed.

Let me end this entry with a little shameless plug for my new favorite DC Area weather blogger, Fernando. Check out his blog Potential Vorticity for the latest meteorological updates.