Remember when we blamed blizzards on winter?
We woke up to 39 degrees in Dallas. It was cold, but nothing compared to what our friends in the north are going through, as we see in this news report:
Blizzard warnings for New York City were canceled early Tuesday morning but remained in effect for areas north and west of the city.
The National Weather Services issued similar warnings for parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.
We wish everyone well and hope that the internet works. It's amazing how much work can be done from home these days with a laptop and the net.
I can remember a few of these March snowstorms growing up in Wisconsin and saying to myself: "The bad news is that I have to walk to school in this crushing snowstorm...the good news is baseball in three weeks!" Isn't baseball always the light at the end of the winter tunnel?
My guess is that someone will eventually blame this one on climate change, global warming, or possibly the election of Donald Trump.
The CBO may even do an addendum to the most recent Obamacare scoring saying climate change will put even more people on the uninsured rolls! After all, didn't the CBO project say the following?
1) The exchanges would be stable by now, with more than twice as many enrollees as they currently have, rather than suffering from severe adverse selection in most states as they now are.
2) ACA Medicaid expansion would be much smaller and less expensive than it has turned out to be.
It was a lot more fun when we blamed these storms on "old man winter." They blamed it on winter back in 1888 when a great blizzard shut down the region in mid-March:
The most severe winter storm ever to hit the New York City region reaches blizzard proportions, costing hundreds of lives and millions of dollars in property damage.
Although the storm also struck New England, New York was the hardest hit, with the 36-hour blizzard dumping some 40 inches of snow on the city.
For several weeks, the city was virtually isolated from the rest of the country by the massive snowdrifts.
Messages north to Boston had to be relayed via England. Even "Leather Man," a fixture of New York and Connecticut history who had walked a circuit of 365 miles every 34 days for three decades, was reportedly delayed four days by the Blizzard of 1888.
Leather Man, who walked during the day and slept in caves at night, was known as such because his clothes were made out of large patches of thick leather.
Let's recover from this blizzard and take a few pictures for the family album. Maybe someone in 2117 will talk about the great blizzard of 2017, or when winter reminded us that spring does not officially start until March 20.
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.