Blizzard

Snow plowers and salt sellers have been heralded as the smartest businesspeople around, but there are others profiting from the Blizzard of '96. To see how companies benefited from the frozen stuff, you have to consider the situations that consumers were in. Let's start at the beginning. First, they were stuck at home. Once channel-surfing got boring, the next option was the VCR. "Business doubled last week," said Richard Stallings, day manager at the TLA Video outlet on Spring Garden Street.

Do these words sound familiar? "There is a winter storm warning posted for Philadelphia with the potential for a heavy accumulation of snow. " One cannot count on all the fingers and toes how many times these words have been said to no avail. These "snowstorms" mostly never seem to materialize. Meteorologists from the National Weather Service and newscasters from the three major networks time and time again have caused mass panic in this city for nothing. On the local news, the newscasters always seem to put the emphasis of a given weather forecast on all areas except Philadelphia.

Four Gloucester County College students, calico baby bonnets tied under their chins, stood in the student center cafeteria draining orange juice from their baby bottles. As each finished the snack he squealed a contented "goo- goo ga-ga" at the lunchtime crowd. Under normal circumstances, imitating babies in front of 300 fellow students would have earned the students the disdain of their classmates, but on this day - the day before April Fools' Day - such antics endeared them to their friends and gave them a chance for a windfall.

When the snow began piling up the other day I got to thinking about the celebrated Blizzard of '88, a monumental snowstorm that lives on in Philadelphia lore. I don't know why I thought about the Blizzard of '88. This week's snowfalls were a piece of cake compared to the dump that slowed Philadelphia to a crawl on March 11 and 12, 1888, almost a century ago. In my early years in Philadelphia I heard old men, men in their 80s and beyond, talk about the Blizzard of '88. They said it was the worst storm ever, and if I didn't believe it, I should check National Geographic.

Hit hard by blizzards and bombings, Cigna Corp. reported sharply lower profits for the first quarter of 1993. Before accounting changes and gains on the sale of investments such as bonds and real estate, the Philadelphia-based insurance company earned $16 million, or 22 cents per share, in the quarter, down from $64 million, or 89 cents per share, a year ago. Cigna's property-casualty insurance division lost $79 million in the quarter, even...

The meteorological midgets at our TV stations blew yet another forecast, hyping and sensationalizing this nothin' 'easter. Their predictions caused me to shop for food, fuel my car, change the oil in my snowblower, wash and iron one day ahead of schedule and waterproof my boots. A starving lawyer out there should file a frivolous class-action lawsuit on behalf of those of us traumatized by these chronically In-Accu Weather forecasts. JAMES J. DOWLING JR., Philadelphia Do the so-called meteorologists have stock in Home Depot and the supermarkets?

The Broad Street Subway stuttered a bit, but never really skipped a beat during the Blizzard of '96. In fact, it would lead the legion of SEPTA blizzard busters, starting with the rail services and then, after lifting of travel restrictions, the bus fleets, in the most dramatic demonstration in history that public transit matters to everyone in this region. There was never a time during the blizzard SEPTA was out of service. In fact, SEPTA employees worked in the most severe weather conditions to assure that vehicles would be "at your service" as soon as possible.

When the new-look Rage lost at New England in the ABL season opener earlier this month, the question arose whether the team's performances in two preseason victories - including one over the Blizzard - were mere happenstances. Perhaps it was just the season opener that was out of character. The Rage (3-1) returned to Hartford yesterday and beat New England, 80-72. It was the third straight victory under new coach Anne Donovan since the opening setback - the Rage's best run since taking the first three games of last season.

Hitting their stride with the NPSL playoffs just around the corner, the Kixx turned in another impressive performance last night by burying Buffalo, 21-7, at the First Union Spectrum. In extending their season-high winning streak to six games, the Kixx (20-14) treated the crowd of 10,279 to a display of hard-nosed, disciplined defense and a balanced, opportunistic offense. Nine players recorded at least one point in the blowout for the East Division leaders. And when they weren't scoring, the Kixx were scrambling back to their own end, blanketing the Blizzard attackers.

During the Blizzard of '93, my attention was pulled in two directions. On vacation in the San Diego area, I was naturally curious about any trials and tribulations my family or friends may have been experiencing. Yet, as I sat soaking up sun and suds at a beachfront cafe, my eyes kept leaving all the wind and snow and ice on CNN to view hundreds of beautiful women effortlessly gliding past me on roller blades, wearing, in most cases, only a bikini top and dental floss for bottoms.

NOBODY CALLS David Shulick's wife a "honky" and gets away with it - at least not without having to spend the next year fighting a federal lawsuit. Shulick, the Center City lawyer who threatened to sue the Daily News for reporting on Wednesday's FBI raid at his office as part of the investigation of U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah's son, recently lost a lawsuit accusing airline employees of negligence and racism after the 2010 blizzard disrupted his family's two-part vacation. The Shulicks, of Lower Merion, said that they were forced to slum it at Denver's Four Seasons Hotel and Orlando's Ritz-Carlton because the storm made flying into Philadelphia impossible.

Nobody calls David Shulick's wife a "honky" and gets away with it - at least not without having to spend the next year fighting a federal lawsuit. Shulick, the Center City lawyer who threatened to sue the Daily News for reporting on Wednesday's FBI raid at his office as part of the investigation of U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah's son, recently lost a lawsuit that accused airline employees of negligence and racism after the 2010 blizzard disrupted his family's two-part vacation. The Shulicks, of Narberth, say they were forced to slum it at Denver's Four Seasons Hotel and Orlando's Ritz-Carlton because the snowstorm made flying into Philadelphia impossible.

ANCHORAGE - One of the strongest storms to hit western Alaska in nearly 40 years battered coastal communities yesterday with snow and hurricane-force winds, knocking out power, ripping up roofs and forcing some residents to board up their windows and seek higher ground. As the storm churned the Bering Sea, residents and emergency responders braced for a possible surge of sea water into already soaked villages along the coast. "People out there are used to extreme weather, but this is not a normal storm," said Jeremy Zidek, spokesman for the state's emergency-management agency.

NEW YORK - The City Council passed legislation Wednesday that members said would prevent a repeat of mistakes like those made during a day-after-Christmas blizzard that shut down large swaths of the city and reverberated far past the holiday, chipping away at Mayor Michael Bloomberg's approval rating and continuing to spark ire among residents and local officials. "We're taking these aggressive actions to make sure that something like this never happens again," City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said.

As the weather of the last decade has gotten more and more extreme, so have our names for the weather. Snowmageddon! Snowpocalypse! Tsnownami! Blizzaster! Snomigod! Call it a linguistic bombogenesis! IFC's Onion News Network even satirized all the wordsmithing with its own mad coinage: Snowlocaust!! With all this ingenious, glitzy, crazed lingo, are we turning weather itself into a celebrity? We asked weather people and language people. Their answers say much about how the weather is changing - and we along with it. "In the last 10 years, the weather has changed from something that starts a conversation to something that drives it," says Tom Thunstrom, proprietor of the website Phillyweather.

Christie should've been at his post Gov. Christie says that he did not return to New Jersey during the recent blizzard because he had promised his children a vacation ("Christie defends blizzard vacation, Saturday). Does he not understand that many people, including health professionals, police officers, teachers, and others, must work when duty calls even if they would prefer to be spending time with their families? I think that being governor of a state falls into this category.

1 The rescheduled Eagles-Vikings game gives us something better to watch tonight than a rerun of "The Good Wife. " 2 The Kensington Strangler is too cold to leave the dark, stinking hole he hides in when he's not stalking vulnerable women. 3 The crowds are light at Foxwoods Casino. Oh, wait-there is no Foxwoods Casino. 4 Finally, Mayor Nutter gets to lead a snow-angel flash mob on Dilworth Plaza! 5 Have you noticed how the moon on the crest of the new-fallen snow gives the appearance of cleanliness to the subway steps below?

Football fans in Minnesota were berating Philadelphians as weather wimps Monday after snows forced postponement of the Eagles' Sunday night game against the Vikings. But by the time the snow had stopped falling, residents were shoveling, driving, and slip-sliding through a foot of white stuff - Philadelphia's 17th-heaviest one-day snowfall on record, according to the National Weather Service. Coming in from the south on winds that gusted as high as 62 m.p.h. at Wilmington's airport, the storm left accumulations of just two to six inches to the north of the city, but dropped 26 inches on parts of Cape May County, piled 30 inches on Brick Township, Ocean County, and paralyzed New York City and much of New England.

PITTSBURGH - William and Jennifer Duffy lost electricity and heat for two days during the record snowfall of February, and it was a week before their street was plowed. Around Halloween, the Ross Township couple are expecting a little reminder of that isolated week - their second child. "We didn't have power. . . . What are you going to do?" said 27-year-old Jennifer Duffy. Their newborn will have plenty of company in the maternity wards in Pennsylvania, which was hit not only by the early February blizzard but by frequent snowfalls for several weeks after that.