The recent snow on the U.S. east coast ...

is because this is some of the earliest snow, EVER, for the northeast, the amount of snow (3" - 22") and it was the heavy, wet kind which is worse than regular, powdery snow because it brings down branches which are several inches thick or entire trees.

How heavy is the snow? Imagine someone putting 3 - 4 gallon jugs of water on the end of your snow shovel and trying to toss the stuff. You get tired very quickly. Even shoveling small amounts is tiring because of the weight.

As to bringing down branches and trees, I helped my dad clear the collected snow off tree branches from around his house to prevent them from snapping. In fact, some of the branches, which you can normally walk under with ease, were all but lying on the ground from the weight of the snow on them. Once the snow was removed they bounced right back to where they should have been.

While doing this, we both heard and watched as branches from pine trees in other peoples yards snap and crack off.

York, PA was on CNN showing the effects. One guy had a large branch (4" diameter) fall on to his windshield while driving. I saw in Yonkers, NY, a tree came down and destroyed both the guys truck and took out half his house. I heard of similar situations around me.

That's the reason this made news. It is out of the ordinary, the amount was very significant and the damage it caused. My local power company said the amount of damage from this storm was worse than when Irene came through early this year.

Sure, Buffalo and Erie get more, Minnesota likes to brag about the amount they get because they have nothing else to talk about during the winter, but this is newsworthy because it's one of those odd occurrences.

This issue is not the amount of snow. The issue is timing.

This same storm 3 months from now wouldn't be note-worthy. This storm now, before the leaves have fallen, is news because those leaves gather more snow than bare branches, causing more downed trees, power outages, etc.