One Storm Too Many

This has been a challenging winter.  Not the worst I've ever lived through, that would probably be 2011 (perhaps not coincidentally the last winter before I moved from Chicago to Vancouver).  Though in terms of actually having the most trouble getting around, I think it was the ice storm (of 1998?) that shut down the el completely for a day or two (essentially unheard of) and the bus replacement system was not much better.

While it has been extremely cold, and we got a lot of snow all on one day, in general the transportation system should have been able to cope.  However, due to the TTC being starved of funding for maintenance, there were many, many signal and track problems that made getting in quite terrible.  Anyway, the forecast is for another terrible day with 15-25 cm of snow and freezing rain pellets.  Montreal is supposed to get something like 30-40 cm tomorrow!

What's quite astonishing is that the Toronto schools decided to shut down, when they were open a couple of weeks ago when we had an arguably worse day.   In fact, this is the first Toronto snow day since 2011.  It's possible there was more or less an open rebellion on the part of the teachers who said they weren't coming in.  York schools are going ahead, though the school buses aren't running, so I suspect a lot of kids won't make it in in York.

The problem is that it is hard to tell what to do right now.  There is no snow at all right now (that is to say none of the predicted new snow), so this is all going to fall throughout the day.  But it is also possible that the snow doesn't hit as hard as they are predicting (which happened in 2001 in NYC when "Snowmageddon" never turned up and the forecasters all looked silly).  If I go in to work now, it will be a breeze, but I don't really want to get stuck there.  If the subway more or less shuts down this evening, then I'll be quite unhappy that I went in.  I suppose I probably can make it back on the 72 bus, or even leave early if things start looking dicey.  I'm leaning towards going and risking it, though I am not that upset they cancelled school for once.  The main way I will cope and adjust is going in a bit early, so I can leave early, and then shifting my regular gym workout* from tonight to Wed.  What's completely certain is that I am completely sick of winter...


* I am somewhat proud of the fact that I have kept going to the gym, even through a fairly dreary winter, and it should only get easier starting around March.  Ideally, that is also when I will start biking to work again, and I can get more serious about getting in shape (right now I am just maintaining). 

Anyway, while the kids probably could have gotten to school and back today before it got really nasty (it was around 5 when the freezing rain started), it's probably not the end of the world for them to have a day off.  Now if the schools are shut tomorrow then that will be more of a problem.