In the aftermath of the mid-November 2018 storm

Yesterday's storm was a bad one. Even though everyone knew it was coming - from forecasters to PennDOT to everyday people - no one seemed to be prepared for how bad it actually was.

Traffic was snarled everywhere. Jackknifed tractor-trailers were the main problem, resulting in multi-hour traffic jams that caused some people to abandon their cars and walk home. Plow trucks were around, but many were driving with their plows up and salt spreaders off. Commutes that should have taken fifteen to twenty minutes took three to five hours. A bus trip from New York City to Scranton took nine hours.

Most of Northeastern Pennsylvania had accumulations of ten or eleven inches, give or take a few. By the morning the snow had been compacted by sleet and freezing rain and then had another layer of snow dropped on top of that. I wanted to get photos, but I didn't have time; I had to dig a path and dig out the car so I could take my mom to a doctor's appointment. The street where the car was parked was unplowed, making for some difficult maneuvering. The main roads of Nanticoke were in good shape, but driving through Wilkes-Barre was tricky: one block would be plowed clean, the next would be virtually untouched. Sometimes it seemed like snowplows must have stopped and reversed course, or simply turned around. By the time my mom's appointment was over, temperatures had risen above freezing, and the snow that had delicately outlined so many of the trees as we drove up had now melted away.

We now know the identity of the Pennsylvania Snow Camel. His name is Einstein, and he's from the Peaceable Kingdom Petting Zoo from Perkasie, near Quakertown in southeastern Pennsylvania.

This felt like one of the snowstorms we get later in the season, like the Valentine's Day storm of 2007 or the storm of March 14, 2017 (named "Stella" by The Weather Channel in their effort to brand winter storms for some reason), when people start to think "Oh, this Winter wasn't so bad, what was everyone worried about?", and then the storm comes around and kicks everyone in the face. But this was the opening act of the Winter of 2018/2019. How will the rest of the season go?