For those of you not in the Twittersphere, the title of this entry is a Twitter hashtag. What is a hashtag, you may ask? It is a way to create groupings on Twitter. For example, people “tweeting” in Victoria often use #yyj to signify that the content of that tweet relates to the city of Victoria. YYJ is our airport code.

Monday, the Victoria hashtag of choice, however, was “yyjsnowapocalypse”. Plain and simple, this means that when it snows, we freak out while the rest of the country enjoys a good laugh at our expense. What constitutes a snowstorm in Victoria has the rest of the country merely increasing the speed of their windshield wipers. Jack Knox, of the Times-Colonist, wrote a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek piece about this in his article last week.

Consequently, I’ve devised a step-by-step guide to Victoria’s snow weather:

1. Environment Canada issues “Heavy Snowfall Warning” for the region.
2. Mass hysteria and panic ensues: salt and snowshovels sell out, stores close early, people leave work early, a run on tire shops occurs as people rush to get tires installed.
3. The first few snowflakes fall.
4. Hysteria continues and the weather is now all that we can talk about.
5. It continues to snow. Perhaps a collected accumulation of 4-6 cm.
6. Public transit is running 1 hour behind on the routes which are still open. Many routes are suspended or have altered routes.
7. CRD Police forces close down certain roads, specifically anything with a slight incline or decline.
8. Anyone who did not  already leave work early, does. Shops close, meetings are cancelled. Taxis make do a roaring business driving everyone who was too afraid to drive their own car home.
9. Three days later, the city is still reeling and Gillian is still riding her bicycle.