The storm of the century? ;)

Meteorologists started giving their warnings on Thursday about the "massive" winter storm "battering much of Ontario and large parts of Quebec" and drivers were advised to stay home last night.

Carey and I got on the road however, because we had two parties to go to, first a fabulous Indian dinner at friends' house and then Alex Smoke. We figured that getting a taxi would be difficult in the storm and so we got a Zipcar so that we could do the driving ourselves. And it was all okay, despite the fact that none of the streets were plowed last night.

The "storm" is still "battering" the city now on Sunday night, and we've got about, umm, 20-25 centimeters of snow so far, but I would hardly call it the kind of "natural disaster" the media and the city here want to call it... Sure, it's a lot of snow, some gusty wind, and -10 degrees, but that's just winter. It's amazing to see how ill-prepared this city is to deal with something that happens pretty much every year. There are still very, very few plow trucks on the streets and instead of plowing and using gravel to fix the icy roads, people here use hundreds of kilos of salt every day to try and melt the ice. It's disgusting how big the piles of salt are on the sidewalks.

It's also interesting to see how many people now seem to think they can laugh at the talk about global warming, because the weather is temporarily quite cold. If someone's got cancer, but he's having a better day, would you immediately claim that the cancer's gone? ;)

Here's a good answer to the climate change skeptics I found online:
"Some of the greatest changes will be felt in Central Canada, says Andrew Weaver, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Victoria’s earth and ocean sciences school. "One of the misconceptions," he notes, "is that global warming means a slow, steady change in temperature. That is frankly not the issue. What will impact people most is the frequency of extreme events." Toronto’s Storm of '99, like Montreal’s Ice Storm of the Century and Winnipeg’s Great Flood, could well turn out to be a mere overture to the far greater wrath of the weather to come."
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0011891