I write, snowbound at home, enjoying the fast-accumulating heaven-sent white powder that has converted our yard into a winter wonderland. And that's even before considering the market consequences for the salt industry!

To the north, however, heat is rising in Pennsylvania, over that state's handling of last week's snow emergency. Some may remember the instructive fate of Michael Bilandic. He had the big shoes to fill as mayor of Chicago following the first Richard Daley. Chicago is justly proud of its historic moniker as "The city that works." Snowfighting in Chicago is world class and citizens have high expectations. New mayor Bilandic misjudged in ordering belated response to his first winter's snowstorms and, as they say, the rest is history. Unforgiving citizens unceremoniously ousted him at the next election.

Enter PA Gov. Ed Rendell who as mayor of Philadelphia and through his first gubernatorial term recorded consistent success in keeping the commonwealth's roads safe and passable. Road users, perhaps, invented the phrase: what have you done for me lately? Last week's unsuccessful storm response left thousands of motorists stranded for up to 24 hours and has generated a political storm destined to be longer than the 50-mile backup on the highways.

As the Philadelphia Inquirer explained, though Gov. Rendell quickly put into practice the post-Katrina strategy of accepting blame and commissioning an independent inquiry, both the Republican Senate and Democratic House have been quick to schedule hearings into the manmade disaster emanating from the natural disaster. The newspaper thinks the agile Rendell will survive, but officials at the state's emergency response agency and PennDOT might not.

They say we never appreciate our health until it's gone or impaired. The same is doubtless true about highway safety and mobility. Each winter we get fresh reminders. Hopefully, those reminders need not be so painful.

Still, no plows on our roads in Arlington, VA -- and no cars have ventured out for a couple hours. But it IS beautiful!

Because we get so close to winter storm watching and are closely engaged in snowfighting, the vast public concern for restoring safe winter streets sometimes surprises us. And others. Dr Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), New York City, used this week's edition of her HealthFactsAndFears.com to decry the furor over transfat (she feels the health concern is minimal) while noting: "the much more significant dangers of an ice storm seem to leave us unfazed." She explained:

Last week's ice storm was also an imminent threat to the life and health of New Yorkers, as should have been readily apparent. When I woke up Wednesday last week, I heard Meredith Vieira mention on the _Today_ show that she had taken an ugly fall and hit her head on ice while entering 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Apparently, two security guards went down with her. ...

Several times on the walk to work, I nearly fell. My staff had similar stories of near-accidents but arrived at the office intact. My twenty-nine year-old daughter was not so lucky. On Wednesday, the cab she was riding in slid into another vehicle. The next day, she slipped on a City street, had the full weight of her body fall on her arm, and fractured her shoulder. She was in terrible pain for the next twenty-four hours and, as write this, just received X-rays and an MRI.

As I left the City yesterday heading for meetings in New Jersey, a large truck came up to the right of the car I was in (a car service with a driver) and cut in front of us. Seconds later, what was probably hundreds of pounds of ice shards fell from the truck's roof and pelted the windshield of our vehicle. The seriousness of the impact only became apparent when the driver lifted the visor: the epicenter of the ice assault was on the glass right in front of his seat, which was now broken. ...

The City was negligent in not warning New Yorkers about the dangers posed by ice. The City schools should have been closed -- setting a standard for offices (many offices, including mine, close anytime there is a city-wide school closure). City officials should have advised the elderly in particular to stay off the sidewalks and streets.

We don't often disagree with Dr. Whelan, but we part company with her passivity in the face of winter weather. Here in Northern Virginia, Fairfax County schools were closed three days this past week because of inadequate snowfighting. We applaud Mayor Bloomberg for keeping New York's streets sufficiently passable to keep schools and businesses open. Failure in snowfighting exacts not only the human toll Dr. Whelan describes, but imposes an economic burden of vast proportion. Snowfighting is New York's greatest public works expense, yet an entiire winter's snowfighting expense is less than the lost wages, retail sales and foregone tax revenues if snowfighters fail to keep roads safe and passable.

So we find oursleves agreeing on her main point: "Why can't we make rational decisions about how to prioritize risks?" And we agree that responses to snow emergencies often fall short of perfection, but we would argue vigorously that we must rachet up our storm response, not rachet down concern for such relatively minor "threats" as transfat.