This 2018 year start has been unique. Recently in early January, there was a very large snow storm that hit the east coast. The news stations called it a “bombogenesis,” which refers, in a strict sense, an intense snow storm that collides with another.
The giant snow storm hit a number of east coast states, such as North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Massachusetts and many more. Bronson Pounders, sophomore, said, “It was good because we had off school and it was very relaxing.” The cold air made about 90% of the US to start the new year off with below freezing temperatures. Already the U.S. had at least 11 deaths from either car accidents or accidents at home, five in Wisconsin, one in North Dakota, one in Missouri, and four in Texas. Florida was hit with snow amounts they aren’t used to, even the animals are in danger with the sudden change in temperature. Iguanas have been freezing and falling out of trees and some even died because of the cold weather. One man in Florida came outside to forty degree weather to be welcomed by a freezing iguana in his yard.
During the storm there was record flooding along the coasts from the Boston Harbor all the way through Myrtle Beach. They had to have commercial airplanes land in New York because of the oncoming storms. Even Boston’s Logan Airport reported a rarely seen low visibility on January 4th due to the snowy weather conditions. Damaging wind speeds got up to about 70 mph in the north east. Many schools in Northern Virginia had busted pipes and had to be closed and buses in northern Virginia would not start because of the unexpected cold weather. It even affected students and teachers because of the cancellation of midterms for some schools. Sophomore, Josh Cantu, said, “I’m happy it happened because it canceled midterms which took off a lot of stress.”
People in many states panicked and rushed to the grocery stores to get food to get through the big storm. Bronson Pounders said, “Once my mom heard about the storm, we went to the store to get what we needed.” We also had many rescuers helping to find people in need of help or saving even animals. People were advised to get their heaters ready because of the negative degree weather ahead.
Many schools were closed from anywhere to 5 to 7 days across the U.S. There were many plow trucks on the roads putting down salt and it took many days to even to make a dent into the snow the temps never got above freezing in the local neighborhood. Only time will tell if this was the last snowstorm of 2018, or if it is only the beginning.