Snowed In and Googling for Survival And I Looked for Cake

Boston got buried this weekend with 22 inches of snow.

The kind that laughs at your snowblower and dares you to go outside.

And while the rest of the country was apparently preparing for the apocalypse, I was inside, warm-ish, aggressively Googling one very important thing: where can I find an Entenmann’s Raspberry Danish Twist.

Priorities.

Turns out, I was in the minority.

According to Google Trends, five winter-weather searches hit an all-time high this week.

Yup. More than blizzards, polar vortices, and that one winter we don’t talk about anymore. While I was thinking about pastry logistics, America was in full snow survival mode.

First up: “Food for power outage.”
Nothing bonds people like the fear of eating cold soup by flashlight. Searches for non-perishable food also spiked to levels we haven’t seen since COVID, which means we all collectively remembered that storms can, in fact, shut things down. Shocking.

Next: “Snow shovel.”
Not just one. Sometimes a second one. Because the first one snapped in half, vanished, or is currently frozen into a snowbank somewhere near your driveway. New Englanders know this pain.

Then there’s “How to test a car battery.”
Cold weather kills batteries. Searches for “emergency supplies for cars” doubled, which tells me a lot of people suddenly remembered they drive a car and winter exists.

“Winter storm radar map” was also trending.
Because nothing calms the nerves like watching a giant red blob slowly crawl toward your town. People in warm states were tracking this storm like it was a true crime documentary.

And finally: “Ice melting salt.”
Sold out everywhere. Of course it was. If you didn’t buy it three weeks ago, you were out of luck and learning to walk like a penguin.

Other popular searches included “airport closures,” “generators on sale near me,” and people making snow cream. That’s ice cream made from snow, for anyone feeling brave or reckless.

So while I was hunting down snack cakes during a historic Boston snowstorm, the rest of the country was Googling how to survive winter.

Honestly? Both are valid.