Snowfall or Snowstorm

For the past two hours, infact for the past two days, all local TV channels have been pounding about the imminent snow-storm in Boston. All schools are closed, state employees have been given a day-off, flights delayed and events cancelled. I’m sure the storm is strong enough to merit all the attention—yet sometimes you just wonder! When we first moved to Boston, we were quite surprised by the how important weather seemed to be in all aspects of life here. Granted that Boston has really cold winters and proximity to the sea leads to more frequent bouts of precipitation. But granting primetime headline status to the weather was not something we were used to. Headline news in India is almost always dominated by politics, scams, violent attacks and the like. Even Arizona seemed like it could care less about the weather (Well it was always just frickin-hot there—probably not much to report, when every day is 100+ F). So when Channel 7 in Boston begins their daily coverage with inches of rainfall and how the daily commute will look on the highway, it still manages to incite small amounts of amazement. Of course most news here is local as opposed to national in India, and maybe talking about the weather is an identifier of a developed country as opposed to a developing one. Nonetheless, the north-east TV journalists do have a tendency to amp up all weather phenomena—what one would call a rainfall in India is always a ‘storm’ here, and a snowfall is more often than not a ‘snowstorm’. More drama—more excitement! I just hope private corporations latched on to it more often—it would have certainly been fun to have the day off from office!