Level 3 "snow emergency"

"Level 3 Snow Emergency: All roadways are closed to non-emergency personnel. No one else should be out during these conditions unless it is absolutely necessary to travel. All employees should contact their employers to see if they should report to work. Those traveling on the roadways may be subject to arrest."

Some thoughts on this:

• There is no consistency between the levels in the different counties. Meigs (where men are still men) had no declared "emergency", though it neighbors Athens county which had a level 3, how could that be?
• Athens county has a history of inflating this "snow emergency" level in the past. Once we were in a store in Athens and they started telling us we needed to leave because we were under a level 3 emergency. It hadn't even started snowing yet! So, our new Sheriff is an improvement in this regard. He actually waited until we had winter conditions in ...um...winter. I had a fellow at work tell me yesterday that Athens county is really bad. I asked him how he knew that and he said he heard it on the news that we were under a "level 3". I explained that every time it snows more than 2 inches we are under a level 3 and the news doesn't really understand the history. But since it's on the "news" it must be true. Kirk Greenfield (WTAP's Meteorologist) has taken great umbrage at my comments on WTAP.com about the "snow emergency" inflation in Athens County. His assumption was since Athens County was under a level 3, it must have been a lot worse than other local counties. This is the wrong assumption due to the above comments.
• The County Engineer would always prefer that we don't drive on the roads anytime it snows. The Sheriff needs to take this into account when he makes his decision under pressure from the Engineers office. (Come to think of it, if they could keep those pesky vehicles off the roads all year long, we'd never have a pot-hole problem.)
• There have been times where locals (driving "illegally" in a "level 3") have cut trees out of the road so the county's snow plows can make it through. I also know of an instance where "illegal" drivers pulled a Township truck from being stuck over a snow covered bank.
• We are the ones that have to attend to elderly neighbors who have no power. Generators run on gasoline. Gasoline is sold a various locations. One has to drive to get there.
• One has to drive to cut the trees off of parent's houses.
• One has to drive to take a load of firewood to neighbors who now have no electric, hence no heat.

Have we even thought about the consequences if people actually listened to the Sheriff (it's the county engineer that prods this decision, by the way) when he "declares" a "snow emergency"?

• Most commerce in southeastern Ohio would cease. We have rt 7, 50 and 33 all major highways running through Athens county. If we all followed the "rules" every semi truck (along with every car/truck heading from / to work) would stop at the county lines. How much snow removal would be happening around traffic jams.
• If we all followed the "rules" local elderly people would have died from the cold. We haven't seen the county trucks delivering firewood or meals on wheels delivering meals. Neighbors should be allowed (and if not allowed, do it anyway) to help their neighbors.
• If we followed the rules we'd have people working 24-36 hours because no one comes to work to relieve them.
• In this slow economy we are going to tell people not to go to work unless it's necessary? We don't get paid unless we go to work. Work is necessary from an economic point of view no matter what.

So, while the government and the media try to make us into whimpering, thumb sucking in the corner adolescents........some of us ignore the rules and act like men.

If we followed the "rules" we'd have a real snow emergency.

I've got an idea for Kirk Greenfield. Instead of giving the population the impression that Athens county is a lot worse off than all the neighboring counties, maybe he should ask why that all winter storms are worse in Athens county, because their "snow emergency" levels are always higher than our neighbors in bordering counties....you'd think studying this phenomenon would be a meteorologist's dream.

Got to go now, have to refill the generator, put wood in the stove. I haven't seen the government here offering to do that for me, yet.

We've turned into a nation of wimps.