Expecting
The Blizzard of 2025

Sunday, 1/5/2024: The only word for this one is “nasty.” It started this morning with a light, dusty snow. Between 9 AM and noon we got about 4 inches of snow. That would have been OK if it would have stopped there, but it didn’t. At around 4 PM it began to rain, even though the temperature was 28, and it has been cold for days. There is now a sheet of ice on the ground and ice on the power lines. Then around 5, the rain changed to a thick, heavy snow, and it’s not near finished. By 5:30 we have freezing rain and sleet. This is the worst option. We could be stuck for days.

I’m set pretty well. I have plenty of food and heat as long as the power stays on. I have first aid and batteries, hand-crank generators and everything else one needs to survive for an extended period. I guess some would call me a “survivalist” or a “prepper” but I’m not extreme like that. I just collect stuff that helps me survive. Often my expectations for the future can get scary.

The ice and water continue to fall. The world is covered with ice. So far today we have had 9” of snow and now we’re getting ice on the top of it.

Monday morning, 1/6/2025: The snow paused during the night and everything is covered with a hard crust of ice. I slept well – a pleasant escape from the disaster storm which is still unfolding outside my window. Now it is snowing again. The town is paralyzed. Nothing is running.

By 2 PM the storm had technically left the area leaving tons of icy snow in its wake. We remain socked in and it hardly feels like the storm is gone. The sky wears a mantle of snowy gray. The birds have retreated to their places of shelter and the neighbor dogs walk and sniff gingerly on the new snow. Thankfully, our electricity has remained on, even though many around us are without power. The power outage is what terrifies me. It’s easy to survive with lights, heat and food. Without power, the conditions become more threatening. It’s miserable to sit in the darkness freezing.

Now we face the boredom of waiting for the ice to melt, and we’re expecting more snow for Friday. We could be stuck for a week or more. We’ll be OK.

Tuesday morning, 1/7/2025: I can’t feed my birds this morning. The stones where I feed them are under 6” of ice-packed snow. I can’t even walk out there. Since Covid, my balance has not been good, not good enough to walk on ice. We tried shoveling but it’s too heavy and hard. A few of the birds land in nearby bushes but none land on the snow where the feeding stones are. I feel like I’m letting them down – they expect me to feed them – but it’s out of my hands at this point. The birds chirp at me from the bushes as if to shame me for shirking my responsibility.

Wednesday morning, 1/8/2025: Icicles are beginning to form on the eaves. They are the chilly ghost fingers of the sky and the sea. Out west, Los Angeles is burning to the ground. This is extreme contrast. I’d rather be freezing my butt off here than be in L.A.

There is some kind of crazy psycho connection between the blizzard here and the firestorms out there, almost an alchemical opposition. I can feel it but I can’t express it. L.A. has my sympathy. I would say, “thoughts and prayers” but that sounds totally lame these days.

Friday, 1/10/2025: It’s snowing again. I started writing this as a storm journal because I expected the snowstorm would be really bad, much worse than it turned out to be. As it turns out, the real drama of the week would be in Los Angeles in something no one expected, that L.A. would be burned so badly and so much destruction would occur. Expectations are funny things. That which we expect so often doesn’t come to pass, and it’s what we don’t expect that sneaks up to bite us on the ass.

Expectations can set us up for crushing disappointments. I expected Kamala Harris to win the presidential election. When it was called for the other candidate, I was shocked and disoriented. Was this the country that I grew up in? I’m sure the people of Los Angeles expected that there would be water in their fire hydrants. Sometimes parents have such rigid expectations of their kids that when the child deviates from the assigned path, it can cause irreparable alienation in the family. Expectations can have a devastating effect on our relationships and our choices for our own life paths.

And yet, we can’t function rationally without making expectations about just about everything. I expect that the lights will come on when I throw the switch. I expect that my Social Security payment will be deposited in my account every month. I expect other drivers to behave rationally on the highway. I expect the people in my life will act in a certain way toward me as they expect the same from me. There’s no escaping it.

Managing expectations is a form of mindfulness. Life seldom works out as good as we hope or as bad as we fear. If you are facing a lot of disappointments in your life, you can examine your expectations. Are you setting unrealistically high expectations for yourself or others? Conversely, are you not expecting enough and allowing people to take advantage of you? Either way, adjusting our expectations can bring us a lot of peace of mind.


Syd Weedon (expecting the snow will eventually melt)
1/12/2025