Szilárd VAJDA's blog

Somebody is always to be blamed. Right now it is his turn. Like it or not you are to be blamed weather man!

As you might know, the federal government has the authority to close all the government facilities due to inclement weather conditions, calamities, etc. During my time here in Washington DC it happend twice, once during the Hurricane Sandy and recently because of some "snow storm" as it was predicted. Definitely the hurricane caused some trouble up north in New York and at the coast lines, but honestly in DC there was not even some heavy rain. Similar for the snow storm, we have not even seen some snow, though there was some in Virginia and West Virginia. However, I was grounded for 3 days to stay at home, though I did worked once at the office and once back from home. 

Definitely I was surprised, because in Europe such thing would never happen. Even if there is 20-30 cm of snow the government is still running (they might close some schools?!). Obvious, but it seems we have different notions of "emergency situations" back in the good old continent. Here, -under the pretext of being careful, precaution, avoiding accident and possible casualties, thousands of people are grounded, hence they can not work, thus no payment. That's the policy, that's the policy!

Yesterday night some heavy snowing has been started and in continued till today at 2-3 pm, however, strangely nobody was interested in shutting down the government. And there was some snow all over, a lot of snow compared to last time when there was no snow at all. Strange. When there is snow you should go to work, when there is no snow you should stay home. Logic? None! At least I was not able to detect any kind of correlation. Do you?

Today I asked my american colleagues how they can explain the phenomenon. They told me, for this snow there was no warning, so no shut down. If there is a warning -even though it is just a false alarm the government is closed. So I have learnt that now it is time to blame the weather man. Nobody else is to be blamed but the poor weather man!?

Weather man bad, weather man bad!