Snapshots Spotlight: Blizzard buries New England

Piled up snow along the street and sidewalk in the Boston, Massachusetts area
after yet another snow storm hits New England. February 15, 2015.
Source: Peter Enyeart, Flickr. CC-BY-2.0.

Snapshots Spotlight:
Blizzard Buries New England

Another week goes by and New England gets dumped on by another big snow storm. According to the Weather Channel website, as of February 18, Boston has had 98.7 inches of snow so far this Winter. That’s over double the average annual snowfall of 43.5. February 2015 is already the snowiest month ever in Boston at 61.5 inches of snow, and it still isn’t over yet. That’s compared to 2^nd place January 2005 with 43.3 inches.

So why has this year been so snowy in New England? Hmmmmm. My “theory” is that Mother Nature is punishing New England for the Patriot's football #DeflateGate, with its own version of a “low pressure system”.  

;>P

Along those lines, I like the editorial cartoon that appeared a few weeks ago in the Boston Globe by Dan Wasserman:

Source: Dan Wasserman, Boston Globe

But after all, weather happens. It’s been happening for thousands or 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 New England, 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.

So here is an opportunity for you to think about what types of severe weather can affect where you and your family live. Blizzards? Polar Vortex? Tornadoes? Hurricanes? Floods? Etc.? What can you do to be better prepared for when severe storms hits?

When my wife and I were creating the educational board game Snapshots Across America, we wanted to have a “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. According to some of our reviews, players like being able to “spoil” a sibling’s, parent’s or friend’s “vacation” by hitting them with bad weather. 

The Curriculum Choice

Fat Brain Toys

Christian Books

But one of the real benefits of this aspect in our game is it also gives families an opportunity to start talking about what happens if you experience bad weather. How do you protect yourself in the 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. 

For more information about Snapshots Across America, and the new updated edition to be release this coming Summer 2015, follow our blog or like us on Facebook

Copyright 2015, Sandell Games.