Facebook tells me that Ohio is also getting some winter weather (there's lots of complaining and pictures of snow-dusted parking lots). Well, Ohio, don't get too bent out of shape; it could be worse. Here's what my street looked like this morning, and that was before it snowed all day long:

I think there must be about three feet of snow on the ground, and we haven't seen the grass here since early November.  The interesting thing, though, is that no one seems to really care. Yes, this is has been a very long winter for Vladimir, and normally things are at least starting to look like spring by now, but there is no media sensationalism, no mass complaining, and certainly no conception of canceling anything (school gets canceled if it is -40F, but that, fortunately, doesn't happen very often). Tthe whole 24/7 weather-forecast-and-complete-and-utter-hysteria thing doesn't exist in Russia. In fact, no one really pays much attention to the weather forecast. There is a saying: "the weather forecast is only wrong once--but every day." It's true--the weather forecast is usually unreliable, and, hey, it's Russia--you have to be tough. People put on a good pair of boots and fur hat and go out into any kind of brutal weather.

I hear that American news channels have started to name regular old winter storms (winter storm March 15th--the worst wintry impact in weeks. Stay tuned for the live doppler 200000000000 coverage after these commercials on your source for winter weather information...). I don't miss that.