Snow Falling on Birches: The Typical Winter Weather that is Hammering the Northeast and Still Catching Us Off Guard

Thursday I awoke to a patch of clouds and air a little nippier than my Pocono mountain altitude has allowed for the past week or so. As the day wore on, and the clouds thickened, I began to notice tiny little flakes of snow building upon the already frozen remainders of ice and weather on the ground from weeks before - weather I thought was supposed to be melting.

By 4pm, AM 790, one of the Lehigh Valley's most popular talk radio stations (centered in Allentown, Pennsylvania), began warning travellers of the road hazards that awaited them. But by 5 PM there had already been approximately 40 car accidents across the some 50 miles of the Lehigh Valley's sprawing and unexpecting rush hour drivers. The Weather Channel had predicted between 1 and 2 inches of snow by midnight in more northern parts of the Lehigh Valley and Poconos, but before the evening had even fallen those numbers were well surpassed. The UPS man delivered my package in more than three inches and declared that he was "stopping right here", because the roads were getting even too slick for him.

Most drivers were delayed 45 minutes, or more, getting to their after-work destinations in Eastern Pennsylvania. Schools did not close, even up until the heavier beginning points of the snowfall, and this made for some treacherous experiences for school buses and anxious parents driving their children home from school.

There are rumors of ice and record-setting frigid temperatures from Georgia to Manhattan. Certainly, New England and northward will experience footage and not just the nuisance of precipitation. The weather is suspected to clear up by 3 or 4PM in Eastern Pennsylvania and southern New York, but the day that began as just "another atypical sunny morning" in the Northeast has returned to its winter promises and is giving all of us, in D.C. and upwards, a snowstorm to remember.