Well, maybe complaining does no good, but 26 degrees F and below IS a disaster here because:
–People aren’t used to freezing temperatures here, and aren’t prepared to deal with the problem.
–Citrus and other farmers in California are losing their crops, which means losing their money. Plus, thousands of farm workers are suddenly out of work because there are no crops to harvest. Moreover, scarcity and higher prices will affect consumers. For one or two freezing nights, the farmers have coping strategies. But they simply cannot protect the trees from night after night of hard freezes. The state and certain county governments have declared a disaster on account of the freeze damage.
–Most Southern Californians don’t know how to drive in the snow. Can they stay home and stay safe? Not if the snow hits while they’re out driving on the highway. Even local police officials were not expecting snow.
–While the news media were making a big deal about the plight of the citrus farmers, they didn’t spend much time telling the rest of us how to prevent our pipes from bursting. Southern California homes, schools, and businesses are not built for freezing weather. Few people here know how to prevent burst pipes, even if they are aware that such an event can happen. I read one report that said hundreds of buildings had their pipes burst because of the weather. Great for the plumbers, but not for anybody else.
–I forgot about our landscape watering system, which was still operating because of the dry weather. Consequently, on Tuesday we had ice on our driveway, and on the sidewalk in front of our house. I’m certainly not the only one who left the sprinklers on. I’ve heard news reports that local emergency rooms are overflowing with people who broke bones from slipping on ice. Many people here would have had no way of knowing that they would step out their front door and have their feet shoot right out from under them. This is not just because many people here have never walked on ice outside of a skating rink. The National Weather Service has been as much as ten degrees too high in predicting lows for our area–which in the past week has meant the difference between ice and no ice. I won’t ask the people with broken bones not to complain.
–Many southern California buildings do not have adequate heating. Normally, if the heating doesn’t work, people don’t care–they just put on sweaters. But in a freeze this severe, our usual lackadaisical attitude towards heating systems could lead to real problems.
The clincher: It snowed in Malibu yesterday–MALIBU!!–all the way down to the ocean. It simply doesn’t snow near the beaches in southern California. But there was a brush fire in Malibu just last week. We’re not supposed to have brush fires in January, followed by snow! Of course people are complaining about the weather!!
How does this cold affect Team 330? We are accustomed to working in unheated areas–a top reason why most of us ordered team hoodies last year–but it would be really nice if we could figure out how to turn the heat on in our quarters this year. The people most affected are our team leader and his family, who live in the mountains. When snow closes the Grapevine section of the I-5, as it did today, they may be unable either to leave or to return home, depending on where they are when the snow comes. These are minor inconveniences for our team, but I can readily understand how people in other parts of the country are seriously affected by what’s happening.
My point is that it’s not about how freakishly cold it gets at your place or mine, but whether our infrastructure is able to stand up under the current weather treatment.
I expect that FIRST will practice its own G.P. and make some allowances for the hardest-hit teams.
…lol…But we do have unseasonably hot weather. I myself am from England and to me 80° during January just seems unnatural to me. Lol
[Quite fun to watch actually!]