Jonas Blizzard Buries Northeastern U.S.

    WEATHER ALERT!    

Snow Blizzard Buries Northeastern U.S.

Winter Storm Jonas buries Washington D.C.
Statue of James Garfield with U.S. Capitol Building in the Background.
Photo taken January 23, 2016 by Geoff Alexander via Flickr. CC BY-2.0

If you have watched the Weather Channel at all the past day or two, you should know that the Snow Storm they have named "Jonas" has buried the Northeastern United States. As of Saturday evening (Jan. 23), the Weather Channel is reporting that Washington DC, Baltimore, New York and many other cities in the Northeast have had over 2 feet of snow.

Here are some other photos:

Queens, New York.

Photo taken January 23, 2016 by John Gillespie via Flickr. CC BY-SA-2.0

Howard Street in Baltimore, Maryland.
Photo Taken January 23, 2016 by Seth Sawyers via Flickr. CC BY-2.0.

But after all, weather happens. It’s been happening for thousands and even millions of years, and depending upon the physical geography of where you are, sooner or later you are going to experience some type of severe bad weather. Whether that weather (pun intended) is a brutal blizzard in the Northeast, upper Midwest or Rocky Mountains, a hurricane along the Gulf or Atlantic coast, a tornado in the Great Plains, flooding along the Mississippi River, a heatwave in the South, or a draught in the West leading to devastating forest fires: weather happens. Yes, WEATHER HAPPENS! And so far all we can do about it is try to predict it, be prepared for it, respond to it and basically just deal with it.

When my wife and I were creating the Dr. Toy Award Winning educational board game Snapshots Across America, we wanted to have a fun “gotcha” factor to create interactive competition with players. Since players are “traveling” across a game board map of the United States to visit tourist attractions from all 50 States, we thought what if your “vacation” got ruined by “bad weather”.

So we introduced “bad weather” cards like this one that would cancel another players vacation to any of the States shown on the card.

Snapshots Across America features other different “Weather Alerts” for different regions around the United States that can be played to “spoil” another player’s vacation to one of the States affected by that bad weather. 

But one of the real benefits of this aspect in our game is it also gives families an opportunity to start talking with their children about what happens if you face or have to experience bad weather. What types of potential bad weather happen in your area? How do you protect yourself in a storm? Do you have an emergency plan? Do you have backup power, heat or water? Do you have an emergency kit with flashlights, food, water and other necessities that might be needed?

A good source of information for what you may need in an the event of an emergency or severe weather is:

http://www.ready.gov/build-a-kit