It’s a bright sunny day in Central Connecticut, the day that makes it official – Winter Storm Juno is over.  The sky is blue, the radar is clear, and even the wind has taken a break.  The temperature is up a tad, allowing for easy plowing and road clearing.  In fact, writing this at 2:30pm (on Wednesday), there is no road problems at all.  That’s really the benefit of the travel bans issued before the storm hit.  They weren’t cleared until the snow was pretty much winding down, meaning the plows had the opportunity to get their work done without citizens in the way.

According to Weather Underground, the worst to get it was Worcester (pronounced WOOster), MA which got 34.5″ during the storm – the most in their 120 years of recorded weather taking history.   Boston got pummeled with 24.4″, and the coastal areas saw up to 6 foot storm surges causing coastal flooding.  Power was lost to over 30,000 homes, and damage was reported at over 2,000 homes requiring evacuation.

Yet of course, there are many calling for weather forecaster’s heads for screwing up this prediction — specifically the New York City prediction (God forbid they stock up with 3 day supplies only to find out they get inconvenienced for 6 hours).

For the rest of us, it was a warning well headed – ensuring that we all remain warm, off the roads, and out of harms way.  This could have been a deadly storm, but early reports is that it basically wasn’t.; different warnings may have had different results.

Truth is — I have to give big kudos to the Weather Channel, who after being the center of attention for everyone on the east coast the previous 24 hours decided to change the lead this morning.  They didn’t immediately fall back on the storm that was, but while they had our attention they went to the storm that’s next.  The next few days will see a small warm up, flurries on Friday, a blast of cold on Saturday, then … another big one coming Sunday night and Monday.  It’s going to be 5-8 inches predicted, which is nothing compared to what we just went through, but out of context that would be a very dangerous storm too.

So we all regroup, reprepare, and be aware for what comes next.

As I keep saying at work:  Life is a round of golf, once I get out of one hole I head to the next.