New York — Let it be recorded here and now that the blizzard of March '01 laid down a record. Not a winter storm record; something much more singular: A winter-storm anticipation record.
It started out in the usual way that jittery expectation that precedes a predicted snowfall. The staff at the hotel where I checked in Saturday was abuzz with it: two feet by Sunday night, they said. And the television was filled with the breathless sound of it all: where the blizzard was coming from, how it was shaping up, the length of time it would sit over us.
Sure enough, by Sunday afternoon, flights were being canceled at New York's airports. A local news anchor stood at LaGuardia, before a bank of empty ticket counters, and solemnly delivered the verdict: The airport was virtually deserted.
Only one thing was missing: The snow.
It hardly seemed to matter. By the next morning. the excitement had only multiplied. Trucks were being kept off area highways, lest snow equipment be impeded in its work. Schools in New York were closed. The streets were sanded, the sidewalks salted, the travelers forewarned: Take public transit. Stay at home.
And of course, don't fly. Cancellations were piling upon cancellations. The airlines wanted to make sure that people remained at home, the television anchors said reassuringly. Comfortable. Not stranded at the airport.
Meanwhile, a barely perceptible accumulation of slushy snow battled to take hold on the ground.
Attendance at the meeting I came for on Monday morning was high, although one colleague did call in to say he couldn't make it down from New Hampshire. He had gone to the airport to catch his flight. It was canceled. He had gone to the station to catch a bus. That was canceled.
Ah, there must be a lot of snow in New Hampshire, we said. No, he responded. None so far.
The New York Times captured the spirit of things: "Amid Few Flakes, Major Readiness."
Still, on Monday night, with a bit more snow falling, announcers plugged bravely on about the disaster in the making. There they would be, standing in the snowflakes and talking of the storm. Or interviewing a law-enforcement official about what was happening on local highways. Things are going just fine, the official would say. Traffic seems to be moving along.
Well, the hopeful anchor would come back, perhaps you have some advice for our viewers? A suggestion that they stay home? Sure thing, the official would answer. Good plan.
Perhaps you've long thought, as I have, that the one sure-fire way to ward off a big storm was to predict it. All that foretelling would make any respectable storm dissipate, just to keep us humble.
But here was a whole new twist. Here was a storm foretold, with all the hyperbole we've grown used to mounds and mounds of snow were coming, all of us were going to be affected, several days running, etc., etc. And the mere foretelling set off all the normal storm responses.
Everything a big storm would normally have produced, the predictions themselves elicited. Not just the carton of milk and loaf of bread we've always gone out for, just in case. Not the customary run on snow shovels. The whole shebang: canceled flights, closed schools, everything.
The storm didn't come? No big deal. The flights are pre-canceled. It might as well have happened.
Monday night, as I write, the announcers are still plugging bravely on. A bit chastened, talking about accumulations of five inches now, nothing about two feet. But persevering. The rain is turning to snow. New York is still bracing for a punch.
They're still showing us all the ghost towns, the suburbs where everyone stayed home. They're interviewing the intrepid souls who ventured out to cure their cabin fever. They're talking about the 859 canceled flights.
At the moment, one weatherman is actually explaining why the blizzard conditions didn't happen. We had all the ingredients for a so-called perfect storm, he assures us. What went wrong is that mild air worked itself into the system. But not to worry. The system is getting back together offshore, and heading back toward us.
When you see this, dear reader, you may well be socked in by this blizzard. Or you may not be. It really doesn't matter. The effects are precisely the same.
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