Dec 18 2008
Snow in Vegas??
This has been an interesting year for weather in Las Vegas. In early March right after the movie “The Mist” came out Vegas was enveloped by the worst fog I have seen in my entire life, I realize that by English standards this might have paled, but when you are used to a humidity of 2% its really something. My girlfriend and I went to the top of the Stratosphere(casino) and when we looked out we literally could not see the strip, no lights, no buildings, no ground. It was a surreal experience to say the least.
Then, last Sunday I was told we were going to be getting snow this week. I scoffed in my smugly superior manner, and was totally certain that if we did indeed get snow it would be approximately 17 flakes… total. Then, to my amazement on Monday it ACTUALLY snowed… a little, we got about a quarter inch on some parts of the city and it was really something. My girlfriend (who had never seen snowfall) begged me to go to the park and play in it. The only problem, was that by the time got there it was raining (rain falling on snow, at 33 degrees isint pleasant).
Then, Yesterday it actually snowed. Im not talking about a half inch here and there, it was an actual snowstorm that was as bad as any I saw in Korea. Traffic stopped moving, buissnesses shut down, cars tried to stop and kept right on going, the freeway top speed was about 40. It was total chaos, and it occured to me. Vegas is completely unprepared for anything like this. We have no plows, no salt, no provisions in place, no planning at all. The funny thing is… can you really blame us? I mean… this is like a tidal wave in Colorado, or a tornado in Hawaii, its like the rain storm we had about 12 years ago when houses literally washed down creeks which were swollen to rivers. I wonder what sort of emergency proceedures will be put into place after this?
