At least this time it's somewhat warranted. We're promised 8 to 16 inches of snow today, and it's coming down hard and heavy.

No, I'm not softening up or anything, but I do realize that living in a state that is NOT Alaska, where people depend so heavily on the municipality to take care of everything for them, this is quite a bit of snow for the people. We're looking at about 100 inches so far this year, when normally the Greater Portland area only gets about 70 inches.





A few weeks ago in class, I was bitterly complaining about repeated class cancellations due to snow.

"This never happened in Alaska. I never missed class because of snow. The only time class was cancelled was if the temp was -40F or colder."

As a student in one of my comp classes here pointed out to me, Alaska doesn't have the luxury of closing down every time it snows or the state would have to shut down for several months per year.

I accepted that as a decent refutation of my argument, and I backed off on cajoling my Mainer students and calling them wimps.

However, I did a bit of research today.

From 1949 to 2000, Fairbanks averaged just under 70 inches of snow per year. Southern Maine's annual snowfall average is higher than Fairbanks! Plus, the winter temps are considerably warmer, too, which brings me straight back to my original assessment of Mainers:

You're all a bunch of wimps.

The front page headline today in the Portland Press Herald read,

Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, snow ... ENOUGH!

Quit your whining already!