I thought I’d escaped the drudge of writing weather stories when I left the general assignment beat at the Manchester, Conn.-based Journal Inquirer, but it’s probably inevitable the cold would creep back into my work with a winter as harsh as this one.
You know it’s bad when even penguins are wearing sweaters.
And you know it’s really bad when even the Fed says the weather is putting a damper on economic activity. This observation bore itself out in casual conversation yesterday with my mechanic. Sure, his business was doing OK (even the polar vortex won’t keep New England drivers off the road for long), but the burger joint across the street has been hurting pretty bad.
And while it’s likely people will start heading outside to patronize restaurants and museums and the like (maybe as soon as this weekend), it’s not super-likely they’ll start ordering double the burgers, to make up for that time they didn’t want to venture out into the near-Arctic blast.
On the upshot, mortgage bankers I talked to for our upcoming Top Lenders section seemed pretty confident that business would pick up just as soon as Old Man Winter lays off. Every cloud has a silver lining, right? As long as that cloud doesn’t drop any more of that fluffy white stuff, I’ll take it.
