8 March 2010 - Barcelona "Blizzard"

My street in the snow

I lived in Minnesota for twenty-six years. In this time I endured some tough winter storms. The storms were most severe when I lived in Hibbing. I remember two years in a row where we received over 130 inches (330 cm) of snow over the course of the winter. Those two years definitely made me a snow lover and made me quite immune to winter weather. This immunity proved beneficial when I moved south to Minneapolis where I’d often find myself the only person out running in the middle of a winter blizzard where temps would drop below zero degrees Fahrenheit and snow accumulations would easily surpass a foot in just a few hours.

Despite these intense winters, I had not experienced a snow day, a day where either my work or my school was cancelled due to winter weather, in well over a decade. In Minnesota, people are so used to snowy, icy conditions that a severe blizzard may just slow a commute but won’t force a snow day. We were simply too accustomed to the weather to ever benefit from it.


Today Barcelona experienced a freakish snow storm. At my school which sits atop a hill overlooking the city, nearly two inches of snow accumulated (Down in the city, I would classify the precipitation as slush, not snow). One of my teachers, a native of Barcelona, had never seen snow like this in the last twenty-five years. Traffic stood at a complete stand-still as drivers sat frightened and confused in their cars. Even though the traffic wasn’t moving, many cars still managed to end up stuck in ditches, atop sidewalks, and even caught in the middle of the road. No one could function. The metro, proving to be the only viable form of transportation in the city, was abuzz with talks of the storm. No one had encountered such a horrendous storm. How could life go on?


A storm like this would have no impact on the operations of any Minnesotan city. Actually, this would not be considered a storm; instead it’d be referred to as a dusting. Nevertheless, this dusting is giving me my first snow day in perhaps fifteen years. As I write this, the “snow” has stopped and my street is already clear (it is well above freezing). Fortunately, school was already canceled, allowing me to go to the bars tonight. Apparently, the IESE administrators hadn’t learned from Minnesotans to wait until the morning to cancel class.