Watching: The Weather Channel off and on all day to hear the latest news on the storm. We noticed that TWC has added the line, "On-Air Meteorologist" to the captions used to identify their weather folks, which seems superfluous. If we're watching them on the screen, then obviously they are on the air.

At lunch time today, Stephen and Matthew announced with great fanfare to Tab, "It's going to snow today, Daddy!" We started calling them our "Off-Air Meteorologists."

Listening: James Taylor's New Moon Shine, especially "Copper Line" and that great folk song "The Water is Wide."

Winter Storm

2:20 p.m. We're expecting what could be the biggest snow storm this winter season. We've heard predictions varying from 3 to 8 inches. When I took the twins for a walk at 12:30 the skies were grey and overcast. On the way home, I began to feel icy pinpricks of freezing rain hitting my cheeks, but the drops were so small that they were practically invisible. The rain has changed over now to large fluffy snow flakes. When I put the twins to bed, I told them it would be snowing when they woke up, which thrilled them. We have had virtually no snow this winter, and they've been longing to have snowball fights.

I've been working hard on first revisions for Cruz, one of my books for the Press. I promised Gretchen I'd have it in tomorrow, but the corrections turned out to be far more extensive than I had anticipated when I perused the master pages. Fortunately, I get paid by the hour for first revision corrections, in addition to the standard payment per page for the entire job. I have a feeling it will be a late night.

11:15 p.m. Still snowing steadily. Channel 6, Philly's ABC affiliate, must have lost a transmitter because it went out right before 11. Channel 3 (CBS) is still airing a movie that must have been delayed due to sports, so we are forced to watch the NBC affiliate, Channel 10, for local coverage of the storm.

This winter, Channel 10 inaugurated the ludicrous practice of naming the winter storms. Their reasoning was that if hurricanes are named then winter storms should be named too. They completely disregarded the fact that hurricanes are very specific types of storms and they are named by the Meteorological Service, not some Philadelphia TV station. Channel 10 is calling this storm, "Winter Storm Ernie," and all their anchor people and reporters are yakking about "Ernie this" and "Ernie that," except for one meteorologist who is pointedly avoiding using the name. The poor woman seems embarrassed by the whole thing.

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