So as you probably saw in the news, Chicago got slammed by 20.2 inches of snow (officially at O’Hare) overnight Tuesday and into Wednesday.

I’m not a huge weather geek, but when something like a hurricane, heavy snowfall, severe weather system etc. blows through I usually keep a close eye on it.

Growing up in the South we saw one big snow, the blizzard of 1993 during which Birmingham received between 12-18 inches of snow, effectively paralyzing the state of Alabama for a week.

Since then, even the hint of snow sends people in the South scrambling to the store for bread, milk and eggs. This is mostly because the South is so car-based, that walking to the grocery store isn’t an option for some.

Anyway, since 1993 a little thing called the Internet was invented which has allowed folks to become their meterologists. Take any hurricane and you’ll instantly find yourself surrounded with dozens of experts each citing their own obscure tracking model that says the storm will either be a catastrophic Cat 5 headed straight for you or a weak Cat 1 drifting lazily into uninhabited Louisiana.

So in the days leading up to the Groundhog Blizzard/Snowmageddon/Snowpocalypse I followed it pretty closely, because I’m a geek. What I found is there are four certain types of posters who appear in the comments of the latest weather-related news.

Old man winter, the scathing skeptic, the political hater and chicken little. [Read more...]