Seriously people...

Is it really that hard to drive in 1 inch of wet snow, especially after the plows have been out and thrown sandy salt all over everything?

This morning we woke up to a "snow storm".  In our area it meant that we had less than an inch of slush on the porch, cars, and drive, and the stuff that was falling lightly from the sky was already rain. Maybe it's just having spent much of my childhood in Michigan, both Marquette and Ann Arbor, as well as a year in upstate New York, outside Geneva, but I would not qualify that as a storm, never mind a snow storm.

However, here in wimp land, most of the school districts had at best a delayed opening, and several of the more inland ones actually cancelled school.  Since elder child's school is in Norwich, even though it is not a Norwich public school, it was cancelled, not that it makes any difference to us, since she won't be attending again until probably at least next week. (The PPT meeting is tomorrow, thank God.)

Younger child attends the magnet high school in New London, which happens to be the only school system in the entire state that is functioning normally today.  Since I drive her, she actually got there more or less on time, which means 90 minutes earlier than the other Groton students.  The roads were fine.

However.... There are a lot of idiots out there who probably should never have gotten behind the wheel of a car this morning (or maybe any other morning).  Just after turning on to the main road from the house I saw a fair few emergency lights, and as I passed them I could see where someone had gone off the road and into a parked mini-van.  The van had presumably been parked in someone's driveway, but it was skewed at least 30 degrees off true, and had a dent at least a foot deep in the back passenger side quarter panel.  I hate to think how fast the sedan driver had been going to do that much damage.  There were reports of accidents all along I-395S; I was going north and we were fine, but the traffic backups on the other side were fairly impressive.

The thing is, that I'm driving a 10 year old front-wheel-drive Santa Fe with generic all-weather tires.  This is not the greatest vehicle for bad roads.  And I had no problems at all.  But then again, I was also driving at a sensible speed and taking turns and lane changes cautiously, something many other drivers in this neck of the wood seem pathologically incapable of doing.

Folks, this may be southern New England, but it's still New England.  We DO get snow, and learning how to deal with it without either creeping at 5 miles an hour or blasting along like a sunny summer day would be A Good Thing.