So here’s what I figure happened last week in Prince George.
Somebody in charge of winter precipitation (also known as snow) was checking over the books at the end of December and realized he had forgotten to give Prince George its usual allotment.
He could have doled it out bit by bit over the next few months, but he was still recovering from New Year’s Eve, and decided to dump it all in one show and call it done.
That was a fair bit of snow we got late last week. I think I was like a lot of drivers in the city: If I didn’t have to drive somewhere, I didn’t.
But while I was out and about a few times, I saw some good and bad things on the streets of the city.
One good thing was seeing how many drivers were giving a bit more room to the car in front of them. Nobody could be certain where the patches of ice might be under that snow, so it just made sense to slow down a bit and give yourselves that extra room to stop if need be.
Also, reading Facebook and other social sites, there were a lot of stories about people shoveling just enough of their driveway to get out and head to work in the morning, then coming home in the afternoon to find someone had finished the job for them. That seems to happen every time we get a big snow dump, doesn’t it?
One bad thing I noticed was a pedestrian crossing 15th Avenue after the city crews had done a lot of the plowing. They had left a fairly good-sized windrow in the median, but the roads were pretty clear.
As I was coming down 15th, I saw a pedestrian step off the curb on the far side of the street, so I was anticipating I might see someone as I went along. What I didn’t anticipate was that they would just keep walking as they passed the windrow, walking right into the other lanes of traffic.
I knew they were coming, so I was able to stop. The driver of the vehicle in the curb lane didn’t know they were coming, and just kept going.
They didn’t come close to hitting them, thank goodness, but it was a reminder to pedestrians that there doesn’t have to be fog or blowing snow to affect driver’s vision in winter.