The whole eastern seaboard of the United States has been granted a White Christmas a week early.
This morning over coffee I told the long-suffering Mrs Terrett how she should get out there and clear the driveway and free the car from the two feet of snow that got dumped on our New Jersey town last night ... and she told me I'd better pick-up a shovel if I wanted to live beyond the next 20 seconds.
Cries of "ooh my back!" didn't work so we did the job together but it took an hour and afterwards we were exhausted.
Once again I kicked myself for not buying one of those nifty snow-blowing machines that most people round here keep in their garages.
You know the kind of thing - they look like lawnmowers - but redistribute the snow away from your path and onto your lawn by throwing it in a graceful arc of slush.
It turns out we were hit by a major storm last night.
One of the top ten worst-ever in the so called Tri-State area. In fact the whole eastern seaboard of the United States has been granted a White Christmas a week early.
For kids it's a bummer.
If this had happened 24 hours later than Saturday night they'd have a snow day on Monday which means no school.
However, as it is the snow ploughs are out and I've just seen a gang of caretakers sweeping the pathways round the high school. (Snowy paths, not snowy roads dictate snow days - can't have kids slipping on icy pathways on their way into the building - parents might sue!)
By the way many families bolt mini snow ploughs to the front of their vehicles at this time of year - so I'd say Americans who live in the northeast are generally pretty well prepared for icy blasts like this.
Not as good as Canadians but better than the British for whom even a dusting of powdery white stuff is enough to bring the country to its knees.
This weekend's US storm really did a number on air travel though.
Hundreds of flights were cancelled at New York's JFK and Washington's Reagan National Airport was whacked by a record two feet of snow.
In the state of Virginia at least five people died in the storm.
The worst damage - apart from to my back - may be to the ailing US economy.
It's Christmas on Friday and usually on the last Saturday before this major Christian festival the big malls are thronging. Not this year. So much so that one TV station has dubbed the storm "The Shopper Stopper".
That could be pretty serious for an economy that is 70 per cent retail based. We'll see when the official figures come out next week.
Still it's not all bad news for the economy ... our TV blew up last night and the girls want a widescreen plasma.
That should help out the Federal Reserve more than a bit.
I'm all for getting our 1982 Sony Trinitron repaired in time for Christmas but the little man who does it slipped and broke his collar bone on the ice yesterday and will be out for the next three months.
Oh well, see you on the telly ... seasons greetings.
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