What do you think a snow storm should cost? If you wanted to order one. Lets say you wanted to order one snowstorm of about 30". Does $450 million sound about right? Personally I think that's a little excessive for 30" but that's just a small ballpark figure looking up information for the Virgina-DC area. Virginia's already gone through its $79 million snow-removal budget plus an additional $25. DC quickly burned through its $6 million and the Federal Government has been forced to close for 3.5 days as of today at an estimated cost of over $100 million per day in lost productivity. I can't even begin to estimate all the cost to state and local governments, the lost productivity in dozens of industries, and the individual cost for an increase in accidents, power outages, downed power lines, weather worn roads, etc. I'm going to leave that up to my economist friends like Rich to figure out. All I know is I get three plus days of snow white bliss to enjoy while the world falls apart around me. This is all rather fun coming from a state where this much snow in a single storm is a lot, but not unheard of, and certainly not enough to shut everything down. Total cost for this snowstorm, probably a billion dollars once it's all said and done. But don't worry lets just say that we end up with 50" of snow, that's only $20 million per inch. I'm guessing we should look to Utah, Colorado, Alaska, New York and a few of those other states that deal with this on a regular basis. I'm guessing their cost for snowstorms per inch is a lot less.
Welcome to the east coast.
Oh and the best part during all of this, President Obama commissioned a new federal office to study Global Warming...maybe they should change the name to something less specific like "Climate Change." Then record breaking winter snowstorms won't make "global temperatures rise" sound questionable. Just a thought.
References:
http://www.nbc12.com/Global/story.asp?S=11949683
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/02/federal_government_closed_on_m_1.html
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/09/new-federal-office-would-study-global-warming/
1 comment:
Do you really think that there is 100 million dollars worth or productivity going on each day? But I am totally jealous of all that beautiful whiteness. And I am glad it is falling somewhere (even if UT has been 45 degrees. Grrr.)
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