The Great Border Storm of 2011, El Paso-Juarez
by Bruce Berman ©2011
EL PASO –It was an amazing storm. Hard to believe it happened. Zero temperatures (in El Paso!!!!). Ice. Snow. Irregular electricity. No internet. Intermittent Gas (for some people). Highways closed. Jobs (including mine. I haven’t been to NMSU since last Tuesday! Bummer! I like it) canceled. Everything closed. Voluntary curfew (requested). Went on for three to five days (depending on which part of this freaky happening we’re talking about, and, when it was all over, yesterday, it wasn’t over because there were major outages of water (I’m going to get that shower eventually…like today!).
Now I think it’ll be El Paso again and we’ll be in shorts T Shirts and swamp coolers, squishy asphalt, hoods up and steaming radiators and complaining about the heat in no time at all.
Like I said, it was like a dream and hard to believe it ever happened.
Even by Chicago standards, it was the real deal. Perhaps worse because this place is just not set up for this. If it became that way every winter it wouldn’t be as bad, utility companies would insulate pipes and conduit, people would seal their houses and have double pane windows, the city would have snow trucks, etc. We might even buy winter coats, drink hot chocolate, and put gravy on our hamburger steaks. So the question is, for the future, will this be a new pattern of weather or was that a freak storm of the century?
Quienb sabe. I’m betting we forget about this forever the first time we find out the Ac in our cars isn’t working so good.
If I were Al Gore I’d go into permanent hiding. This is not Global warming.
