3 inches? That's adorable! We Canadians get average big storms between 8-12 inches, sometimes as much as 15 or 16.
But yeah, I can imagine people in Alabama'd be all like "JESUS CHRIST, THE WORLD IS ENDING!"
Heh, I remember a distant relative moved to the states with their family a few years ago. Don't recall exactly where, but a place that rarely got snow. They got hit with a small bit of snow. Enough that warranted shovelling in my cousin's eyes. So he goes out and starts shovelling the driveway and walkway. ALL the neighbours around came out and watched him, scratching their heads, wondering what in tarnation he was doing.
Yeah, growing up in Sweden there was only ONE time that the snow was bad enough that they actually closed the schools, think it was back in 94 or 95. I was 19 years old at the time so it just managed to sneak in and spoil my perfect record, I guess. Granted I lived in the southern 3rd of the country (right in between the 2 large lakes in the south), but there were always at least a couple of days every year where you had to shuffle through a knee high layer of snow to get to school. And if you were late because of it the teachers would still lecture you about the importance of arriving on time.
The one time schools closed for snow has a story to it. The day before the big snow storm (in November of all things, normally never any snow to speak of in November) we had a school trip to the nations capitol, to take a tour of the parliament and a few museums. A friend of my moms had a woman, named Mariama, visiting from
the Gambia (in Africa). She got permission to come along on the school trip even though even though she wasn't a student. She had been to Sweden before and experienced snow, but never close this much (it was the most amount of snow I had ever seen). On the trip back home from Stockholm we could tell it was bad. The last quarter of the journey even our big heavy bus had to move at a slow speed. It was past midnight at this point, so no traffic to speak of, just too much snow.
A few hours later then predicted the bus arrived at our drop off point. The walk home from there would normally be about 5 minutes, but with snow up to our asses the walk took over 15 minutes. It was about 4am and had snowing heavy for 24 hours, The snowploughs couldn't even clear the main roads fast enough. As we trudged on home I would occasionally call out to Mariama to hurry up. She never responded and just struggled after me silently. Being a self centered 19 year old I didn't realize she was afraid (I feel so bad about this now). Having grown up jumping in and out of snow drifts for hours I knew we weren't in any danger. With our layers of clothing we could walk for hours if needed. The damn snow was just annoying to walk through. She thought that we were in danger of dying and that was why I was rushing. Only when we finally reached home and my mom greeted us with hot chocolate did she reveal that she had been scared.
Later that day she had a better experience. It had finally stopped snowing. Most of the roads were still covered in an impenetrable (by car) layer of white. My mom took Mariama with her to the grocery store. As I mentioned schools were closed and kids were, of course, all over outside playing the hell out of the snow. Building forts and shooting down the slopes, on sleds and skis, like rockets. The normally 10minute, one way, walk took about 25 minutes and mom said Mariama was laughing the entire time. She had to stay with us for a few days because my moms friend lived out in the boonies and were really far down on the priority list for the snowplough. Can't recall what else we did during that time, but I think she had quite the story to tell back home.
