Snow-driving tips for Intel’s prospective employees
Welcome, prospective (and currently imaginary) workers at central Ohio’s proposed Intel megafab!
We know you don’t exist yet, except on paper and in the minds of corporate hotshots and Ohio’s elected leaders. But we Midwesterners are a neighborly lot, so we thought we’d extend a warm welcome, even if you and your workplace are a few years removed from reality.
We’re not sure where you’ll be coming from, although we suspect the lion’s share of you might hail from warmer and sunnier climes than Ohio, places like Arizona and southern California. Even Portland, Oregon, which apparently anchors a huge part of Intel’s workforce, receives a mere 2.6 inches of snow a year. That means you may be a little reticent when it comes to our inevitable winter weather.
So that is where we’ll begin this first session of your orientation, with the warning that the greater Columbus region receives 10 times that much snow in an average winter. Ten times!
If you do the math, and as Intel employees presumably you will do the math, you no doubt will notice that central Ohio’s annual snowfall total is still a measly 26 inches. The Boston metro area got more than that in one day last week, and they’ve already stopped talking about it and resumed griping about Tom Brady.
Here in central Ohio, people talk about what little snow we receive far more than is necessary or healthy.
The problem, you see, is that although Ohio sits pretty far north in terms of the United States, 26 inches a year is not enough snow for people to grow comfortable with it.
Clevelanders deal with twice that much snow in an average winter. It becomes a fact of life up there, like the permanent state of ennui that goes hand-in-hand with being a Browns fan.
Here, though, we talk about impending snow for days before the flakes fall. We call anything over two inches a “storm.” We view it as a battle that we have lost before it begins.
We even – and I am dead serious about this – call our plow drivers “snow warriors.” In fairness, we tried calling the summer freeway mowing crews “grass grunts,” but it never caught on. Neither did calling the roadkill collectors our “carcass cavalry.”
Once you’re driving around town, you might notice some of the warriors’ handiwork, those white stripes that appear on the road surfaces before it snows.
This is called “pre-treatment,” but it might as well be called “appeasement,” because so far as we can tell, its sole function is to communicate to the motoring public, “See? We did something for the snow. Now leave us alone.”
Soon after the snow begins to stick to the pre-treatments, you’ll find that even the major arteries have become coated with an impenetrable shell of compacted snow and ice. This layer is encouraged in order to protect the roads, and to ensure that those tiny little reflectors embedded in the tarmac make it safely through to spring and their destiny of being crushed and battered by the gazillion tractor-trailers that pass through central Ohio every day.
Of course, safeguarding the road surface
like this may come at the expense of your Tesla’s front bumper. But that’s what insurance is for, and in Columbus, insurance is king. Or if we might try out your own special vocabulary, insurance is megafab.
When questioned about subpar road conditions, the folks responsible will cite statistics such as, “Once snowfall rates reach one inch per hour, it becomes impossible for our crews to stay ahead of the storm.”
To which, you might reply, “Yes, but
the storm subsided after one hour, so there is only one inch out there.”
To which, they might reply as Mayor Michael B. Coleman did in 2000: “The snow warriors are prepared. I see it in their eyes.”
The solution, you would think, is to stay home when it snows unless you really have to go out. But that’s crazy talk in these parts, so you will have to learn to drive in the snow.
There is the way AAA suggests, but if you want to fit in here, don’t do that.
Instead, just know that there are two accepted speeds on snow-covered roads: 12 mph and 82 mph. There is no happy medium.
You may get lucky, though. Most of you will be driving on Route 161, also known as the extended driveway to our most-famous citizen, Les Wexner. If you can time your commute to match his schedule, rumor has it that he commands his own regiment of snow warriors.
If that doesn’t work, don’t follow the advice of professional race car drivers when they tell you to, “Look where you want to go.” Instead do as central Ohio drivers do and look where you are going to end up.
And that is in the ditch. Don’t worry. It’s worse than it sounds, because remember you were likely stuck behind a driver going the mandated 12 mph.
Once in the ditch you’ll have plenty of company. It’s a great way to meet the neighbors. tdecker@dispatch.com @Theodore_decker