Pwetty Pwetty Bwizzard . . . Fwuffy Wike Persian Cats!

The Times takes great pleasure in pointing out that the Blizzard of 2006 was not so bad after all:

Even as the snow fell, and fell and fell, late Saturday and throughout Sunday, it never felt like the end of the world. Almost no one lost power. No one died from the storm. Hospitals were not swamped with shoveling-related heart attacks. No state, county, city or borough of emergency was declared.

As for why, various explanations are offered, including an inventive Persian cat comparison:

Because the track of this storm was relatively far offshore, it did not pack the wallop of wet warm ocean air that northeasters can, so the snow was dry and fluffy. Very, very fluffy. Like a Persian cat in a roomful of hair dryers. Thus it blew right off tree branches rather than snapping them down onto power lines. It practically shoveled itself.

Then there’s the issue of measurement:

News of the record-breaking storm that rolled through this weekend did not particularly impress Mr. [Billy] Slavin. “They keep records for Central Park,” Mr. Slavin said. “This is Elm Park [Staten Island].”

Mr. Slavin hit on another mitigating aspect of this storm. There really was less snow in Elm Park. And it wasn’t just Elm Park. Borough Park, Ozone Park, Parkchester, Park Ridge, Minnewaska State Park, the Vince Lombardi Park & Ride — just about any park other than Central, the record-breaking storm actually broke no record at all.

For according to Geoff Cornish, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, the heaviest snow fell in a 15-mile-wide band that passed directly over Midtown Manhattan, the southeastern Bronx and northwestern Queens. Thus La Guardia Airport in Flushing received 9 inches more snow than Kennedy, and nobody in Brooklyn saw even 20 inches, let alone two feet.

In fact, of the 17.7 million people who live in the National Weather Service district that includes Central Park, fewer than half live in counties that recorded a two-foot snowfall.

One more thing. Not to cast doubt on a record — or on the hard-working people who keep it — but do you know who measures the snow at Central Park? The security guards at the zoo. They read the numbers off a stick set in a flat, tree-ringed clearing near the sea lion pool.

Therefore, the words, “According to the National Weather Service, the snowfall in Central Park . . .” actually mean, “According to the security guards at the Central Park Zoo.”

Well, thanks for spoiling it. Jerks.

See also: Language Log’s “The Storm Is Real, The Word Is Still Fake” on the use of “nor’easter”.