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Being a native New Brunswicker, I had never before had the chance to experience a wonderful Prince Edward Island winter. I was feeling up to the challenge, though, and awaited the first snowstorm with the same kind of eager anticipation as with every blizzard back home. Until it actually happened, the weekend of Jan. 21. It wasn't the storm itself that sucked, just the after-effects. Even though the Island didn't get massive amounts of snow, there seemed to be nowhere to put it so it ended up laying all over the streets. Driving anywhere was pretty much impossible, not that I was brave enough to try with those cute dry and safe roads, and never mind the fact that I don't have a car anyway. Sure, there are humongous snowstorms from time to time and yeah, it might be a little hard to get the roads all cleared off. Southeast N.B. is pretty much the notorious snowfall record-breaking capital of the Maritimes, so I'm no stranger to school closures and cleaning off driveways. In 1992, over the course of a couple of days, the Moncton area got 151 cm of snow. If something like that ever happened in P.E.I. I don't know what they would do. The whole Island would probably come to a standstill until all the snow melted, seeing as that's basically what happened this past weekend with the 20 or so centimetres that fell. When I finally did manage to get out and about at the end of the weekend, I was pretty surprised at the road conditions. Think snow-packed and slushy with a bit of dirt sprinkled here and there. Hmmm...OK, maybe this is just a road they haven't gotten to yet, I thought. It'll probably be better somewhere else. That was when I noticed a two-way street with this big snowbank right in the middle of it. On either side were tiny tunnels packed down for cars to drive in. I had never seen anything like it. For a split second I wondered if it's true that on the mainland I live a sheltered existence and I really haven't seen it all until I came to P.E.I. I realized that wasn't the case only when I heard Islanders complaining about the same thing. It seems that everyone noticed the magnificent techniques used to clean snow off the roads--let it sit there and melt. Those tiny bits of sand scattered here and there are not going to be a huge help when the ground under them is still buried beneath six inches of snow and slush. The only thing it really accomplishes is making the street look dirtier. Later in the week when it started to rain, the evil snow melted and turned into water, as it always does...water with no place to go because all the drains were clogged up with the slush that didn't get cleared away earlier. So a whole new set of problems evolved and people were out trying to shovel out the drains. Would it not have been easier if the problem had been taken care of when the snow first came? There seemed to be plenty of snowplows around Charlottetown in October, driving through town with their blades up in the air on a 15 degree day. Where were they when snow was actually on the ground? I don't know if this was the norm for ³storm procedures², but I wasn't overly impressed with the way things were taken care of and everyone I've talked to seems to have the same opinion. Oh well...there's only about five months of winter left. I'm sure we'll all get through it!
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