I like snow. It has amazing properties: solid but squishy, easily moldable, and it is cold. Being born and raised in the Detroit area, I am pretty familiar with the stuff.

When you grow up around here, you love the stuff. It has the magical ability to cancel school; which, when you are a kid, is something that even your parents cannot do. It is also the thing that all winter fun is based around. You build snow forts, and you attack and tear down snow forts. Snowballs are constructed and then hurled at your brother or his snow fort. It is truly an amazing substance.

This year in the Detroit area, we have received 58.9 inches of the powdery stuff, and we are forecast for another 5-10 in the coming few days. This is actually quite a bit above our average, which is 41.1 inches. Thank you NOAA. Now Detroit has a reputation as a snowy cold place, but rest assured there are places much much snowier then we are. The king of all snow hauls belongs to a city called Valdez, Alaska, where they receive a whopping 326 inches per year. That is ever 27 FEET of snow a year. I am from the cold North, and I don't even know how to conceptualize that much snow. For those of you who think it is unfair to bring in Alaska, the king of the lower 48 is  Mt. Washington, NH with over 21 feet, and 2nd is Blue Canyon, CA with around 20 feet per year.

If they cancel snow around here for 8 inches, to get the same effect in Blue Canyon, CA, they would have to cancel when they receive 45 inches. If we ever got that here, I am pretty sure I could not get out of my house. So I guess it really is not that bad here, and it always good to have something on hand to hurl at your brother's snow fort.