We can’t help being jealous of the snow

We humans can be masochists when it comes to big weather events. On the one hand, the threat of a hurricane or a heavy blizzard can fill us with dread; on the other, it can cause giddy anticipation.

The forecast for Upstate South Carolina this weekend is for a “wintry mix,” something that incites neither true dread nor giddiness. The general reaction to wintry mix is akin to a low-grade headache, more bothersome than genuinely painful, but definitely unwelcome.

However, the forecast for most of the East Coast north of here, especially the Mid-Atlantic, is something else altogether. Folks in northern Virginia up to New York are being warned to expect a massive snowstorm, a blizzard for the ages, a confluence of meteorological factors that could produce not just inches but possibly feet of snow.

The weather people have been watching this storm evolve for about a week, and all of the projections reportedly point to a blizzard of historical proportions. Sometimes such prognostications leave a little wiggle room for weather patterns that veer or peter out at the last minute, but not this one.

Many may remember a similar forecast a year ago of a storm that was supposed to bury New York City but failed to materialize. But as Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist who writes about weather and climate for the online magazine Slate, explains, this storm is different. He says it will be “a sprawling slow-mover, virtually guaranteeing heavy, multi-inch snowfall across a vast swath from Virginia to New England.”

He adds that the El Nino that produced springlike weather along much of the East Coast throughout much of December now will contribute to the severity of this winter blast. The El Nino has increased the surface temperature of the coastal Atlantic waters, which increases the available moisture in the atmosphere that can turn into snow, especially if, as expected, the low-pressure system takes its time moving across the region.

By all reasonable standards, this is bad news. A blizzard that massive is likely to result in huge property damage, electrical outages, travel delays, car wrecks, school and business shutdowns, and the possible loss of lives.

So, why do so many people look forward to a storm like this with such eager anticipation? We can understand why meteorologists are drooling. This is their job and, after so many weeks of forecasting abnormally warm weather, they finally get to predict a really, really big storm, and you better believe they’ll be giving their best end-of-the-world performances.

But weather is not a job for most of the rest of us. We’re just the victims. Why would we be jazzed about a gigantic snowstorm?

Well, first of all, because it’s big. It has the potential to be an exciting spectacle, something so out of the ordinary as to be historic, and, even if it is potentially life threatening, there’s something that makes us want to be a part of it.

There’s also something appealing about a snowstorm that is powerful enough to bring normal life to a halt, if only temporarily. In the wake of a storm like that, we dig ourselves out of monstrous drifts of snow to discover streets empty of traffic, a world covered in white, silent, with only a few brave pioneers daring to venture out into this forbidding world. For a while, we can be genuine survivalists.

The exhilaration won’t last, though. After a few days, a blizzard is not a romp in the snow but an agony to be endured. We end up wondering why we wanted it to snow in the first place.

Still, it is absolutely certain that many of us who will be ignominiously pelted this weekend by a puny wintry mix will be raptly watching the weather reports with unconcealed envy of those being buried up north by the blizzard of the ages.

In the end, the explanation for this contradictory attitude toward big weather events could be as simple as this: Some people never learn.

This story was originally published January 24, 2016 at 11:20 PM with the headline "We can’t help being jealous of the snow."