If you were somehow able to get an aerial shot of Wake County today, besides a ton of cars practically parked on highways, thoroughfares and side streets, you'd see hundreds of thousands of people collectively scratching their heads. If you look closely, you may even be able to pick out a few befuddled meteorologists who, with probably hundreds of years of experience between them, still cannot figure out how we got 1-2" inches of snow. Yes, you read that right. I said 1-2" of snow befuddled and crippled our city.

"Light-weight North Carolinians", you say, "can't hold their snow." And normally, I'd be very agreeable with you. I, too, am a "light-weight" North Carolinian, I don't like driving in the snow. But I'll be the first to admit that when they call for flurries in central North Carolina, Wonderbread and Borden executives everywhere start givin each other high fives and then plan how their gonna spend their bonus checks. In all fairness, though, the nightmare that so many of us endured today goes far beyond anything in comparison. So many independently "likely" scenarios conspired together to create one ginormous "unlikely", disastrous scenario: roads already frozen from our recent taste of cold weather, a blindsided attack of 1-2" of dusty, yet still frozen precipitation, overly confident drivers, schools closing early and unexpectedly ... did I miss anything ... all leading to commute times increasing tenfold!

As I'm writing this, just before heading off to bed, I have endured 3 hours of travelling a 40 minute trip myself. In addition to that, my mother journeyed 18 miles from work to home in just under 7 hours. Because I didn't ask him to call when he got home, I'm not positive that BJ has made it there yet. I received several calls requesting suggestions for alternate routes and all I could give them was "grin and bear it" avenue; not to be mean, or even annoyingly realistic, but because that was the only advice I could think of that would actually be useful. To top it all off, 3,000 kids are living their worst nightmare, being forced to spend the night at school!

Indeed, it wasn't one of the great disasters of the world, and certainly there are far worse things than being stuck in a heated car in traffic or even on the side of the road. But to say the least, today was unexpectedly inconvenient for many of us, and we'll be glad to have it behind us. That is, once it is behind us (shout out to those of you still on the road). Now we central North Carolinians have another story to tell, as I'm sure it will be difficult for any of us to forget the day the snows came.