What people have been preparing for for generations has finally arrived. People have stocked up on all the essentials: toilet paper, food, water, generators, and basically anything they can get their hands on for when they are trapped inside their homes, unable to live their daily lives.

Temperatures have exponentially dropped, and home heating has been turned up to the maximum because doomsday is here.

Oh wait, it’s actually just a snowstorm.

However, this snowstorm about to hit Londonderry is going to be the biggest one in almost four years. People have been acting like an apocalypse that is going to end all of mankind is rapidly approaching. 

My Tiktok and Instagram feed is flooded with worried millennials frantically talking about how the trees are going to explode from the air temperature. While this is a real possibility, we don’t need to include that dark, scary music that’s always used in those terrifying deep sea videos.

Parents have also been preparing their children for the storm as if it were a hurricane. They’ve written their names and phone numbers in sharpie on their children’s arms, packed their kids’ backpacks full of the most random survival gear, prepared the kid for bedtime in a closet to keep them “better sheltered” and, once again, each video has some dark, scary music playing over it. There’s nothing scary and horrifying about snow.

With all due respect, why are we writing phone numbers on children’s arms? It is a snowstorm. The house isn’t going to get flooded like a hurricane. They shouldn’t need to go find safety outside. They won’t be getting lost.

People have also resorted to wrapping their feet in tinfoil then putting their socks on to trap their body heat in and insulate their feet. Are we serious? Whatever happened to fuzzy socks and some slippers?

Grocery store lines are being backed up to oblivion because people are preparing to be snowed in for the next six to eight months. Yes, people should prepare and make sure they have food, but having multiple shopping carts filled to the brim is just unnecessary. This is not the hunger games.

I understand that people who are being impacted by this storm may not be used to snow like this as they might live in other regions of the country. However, New England deals with this type of weather year after year, so there’s no reason for other regions to prepare for war with mother nature because they will get through this.

Even though we haven’t had a ton of snow in recent years, the reaction to this storm is an extreme over-exaggeration of what is to come. We live in New England — this is nothing new. We have seen snow and ice before, so why are we acting like a child at Disney for the first time? I can understand wanting to be prepared for anything that may go wrong, but seriously? It is a snowstorm in New England during the winter.