Under Winter Storm Watch

The battering of the east coast today reminds me of when we lived in a small town in NW Iowa. Before any storm, people crowded to the stores. People followed others around the parking lot just to snag a free shopping cart. Milk and egg and bread products were the first to go, for with only a couple inches of snowfall on the wind-swept plains, drifts could be building-high with roads closed for days, meaning no trucks bringing in things like milk and eggs and bread products.

So when we moved from IA to western NY, the first time I heard a weather report of a squall coming in, I packed up our kids and rushed off to the closest convenient store, hoping to get there before the crowds, and because it was a small store, maybe tons of people wouldn't think to go there first.

Besides the clerk, we were the only ones there. Thinking the shelves had already been stripped clean, my heart sunk as I rushed to the back of the store. To my surprise, there was hardly a dent in the well-stocked milk and egg and bread areas.

"But a squall's coming!" I nearly shouted to the clerk, handing him my load-up-to-hunker-down foods.

"Yeah?"

Seems squall in Western New York meant "some lake-effect snow possible," which happened nearly every winter day in Buffalo, a town and suburbs well knowing how to handle snowfall.