Pistachios and Parachutes: Surviving A Mid-April Blizzard Gets Surreal

The weather forecast for the second full day of the blizzard can best be summed up with one word: BOHICA! The wind and snow have been otherworldly for the past 40+ hours, and it’s starting to make things weird.

Note: “BOHICA!” stands for “Bend Over, Here It Comes Again!”, and is a phrase with which I became intimately familiar during my time in the military.

Being originally from northeastern Ohio, I’m not really a novice when it comes to snow and the characteristics of winter weather. In fact, my hometown area averages more snowfall per year that my newly adopted home in Green Bay, WI.

The duration and intensity of this mid-April blizzard is truly impressive, though. In addition to the feet of frozen precipitation (in one form or another), the sustained winds of over 30-mph (gusting to over 50-mph) have not ceased since before dinner last night and are scheduled to continue until well after I go to sleep tonight.

That level and amount of howling starts to mess with your head after awhile.

My girlfriend, for instance, is unraveling. Yesterday morning, she told me she couldn’t make it less than one half mile to the tax office because “the wind was hurting [her] physically and emotionally.” It had been a particularly emotional morning for her in general, because she’d intended to purchase coffee at a nearby coffee shop which was closed like almost every other store and restaurant downtown.

This is the same girlfriend (I only have the one) who hilariously crumbled approximately 8 hours into a 30-day dietary challenge recently.

“Almost?” you ask? Yep. Only the most essential buildings were operating. Like the copy store where I work, for instance. No walk-in customers, no phone calls, just me and Pandora, wailing along to Florence + the Machine while making copies. Who cares that the local news station announced that they’re afraid to take their “stormchaser” vehicle out? People need pamphlets!