TOW #18: Storm buries Northeast; 16 inches of snow in NJ by: Kathy Matheson and Michael Rubinkam

My father is convinced this winter is the worst he’s ever seen. Almost every day he says some variation of, “I’ve lived in this area all my life; I’ve never seen a winter like this.” Of course, who does not know that we have been bombarded with blizzard after blizzard. With another monster storm looming, I googled “snow in Philadelphia” and came up with pages and pages of articles. I clicked on one, by citizens/Yahoo writers Kathy Matheson and Michael Rubinkam, and got sucked into their description of the peril that the snow has brought us. Through descriptive diction and mini anecdotes, Matheson and Rubinkam are able to paint an accurate picture of winter here in the Northeast that makes readers feel for this area’s unlucky inhabitants.

In order to transport the reader to the frozen tundra that is now the Northeast, the writers use descriptive diction. In describing this storm, words were extremely varied, and evoked an image in the readers’ mind. The storm was a “fierce blast of winter,” “swirling,” and “stinging” people’s faces. Instead of conventional words, these more descriptive adjectives bring new life to this storm. With language like this to paint a picture, I could practically feel the snow on my tongue even if I was in Texas.

Working in conjunction with descriptive diction, mini anecdotes work to illustrate the dire conditions and evoke sympathy within a reader. One person was described to be “squinting to read the destination on an approaching bus in near white-out conditions”. Another was “wearing just a thin jacket huddling underneath an overhang as snow stung his face”. These short but effective anecdotes make the reader feel the same pain (or something far-off but seemingly close) as the poor victims of WINTER 2014.

In conclusion, Matheson and Rubinkam do a good job at attempting to convey our widespread pain here in the polar vortex. They use fresh and descriptive words, and construct a string of short anecdotes. Both of these achieve the desired effect: the reader inevitably thinks “oh those poor people!” Yeah, we know.

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