Let it snow: Residents arm themselves against winter

November 10, 1996
Web posted at: 1:20 p.m. EST (1820 GMT)

From Correspondent Kathleen Koch

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The weather outside isn't frightful -- yet. But that hasn't stopped residents of the northeast from stocking up on snow removal gear in case nature zaps them again with another record-setting blizzard.

That four-letter word -- snow -- is already in the forecast, and residents from Maine to Virginia have learned to be afraid. Very afraid.

Haunted by memories of 7-foot drifts, unplowed roads and backs aching from days of shoveling, they're going for the heavy artillery.

"I got on, and I'm not shoveling this year," says Harry Levinson, shopping for a snowblower. "We have a baby coming in March, and I've got to have the driveway clear. It's a long one."

Levinson put his money down on the last snowblower this Virginia store had left. The store manager hopes that even a snowblower with a "sold" sign on it will motivate others to action.

Regional retailers like Hechinger and Home Quarters Warehouse say nationwide snowblower sales were up 184 percent last month alone.

"They've been blowing out the store," says Pierre Johnson of Hechinger. "We don't have any in stock."

Elliott Harkavy snapped up the last power shovel on the shelf.

"You just plug it in and press the little trigger over here, and you just push it along the ground," he says.

However, not everyone has given up on clearing snow the old- fashioned way. Stores are reporting brisk sales of snow shovels. At Sears alone, they're up 84 percent over last year.

Cities are worried too, laying in stockpiles of salt and sand. The nation's capital promises to have at least 35 more snowplows on the road, with divine intervention as backup.

"I pray to God it doesn't snow 54 inches, 35 inches or 20 inches, quite frankly," says Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry. "And I have a pretty good pipeline and I hope that it works."

Blame the powderful paranoia on last winter's blizzards and dire forecasts by farmers' almanacs.

"With regard to snow, we're actually looking for about 70 percent above normal," says Gerald Spessard of "Hagers-Town Almanack." "For example, our area gets normally 35 inches of snow. We're looking for 60 inches of snow this year."

But scientific forecasters say East Coast residents have nothing to fear but fear itself.

"Here in the mid-Atlantic states, we are forecasting near normal conditions," says Robert Livozey of the National Weather Service.

So call them paranoid or panicked; blizzard veterans say they'd rather be prepared.

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Let it snow: Residents arm themselves against winter

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