Mother of All Snowstorms

This puzzler today is about the weather.

We are used to very extreme winters up here. So one weekend, we had the mother of all snowstorms. That is what the weather people called it anyway. They said it was gonna snow harder than it has ever snowed before. And it did. All weekend long. It was windy but changed to sleet and freezing rain. We get everything thrown at us. You know, everything we have come to know and love about New England... ha!

So, Monday morning we go into the garage to start shoveling ourselves out. Immediately, the phone starts ringing. People asking if we are open or not. People are calling up about one particular problem. Lots of people. The phone keeps ringing and it is people with this same problem.

During the snowstorm, something had happened to these cars that made them virtually undrivable. In fact, over the course of the morning, several of these cars were towed because the owners were absolutely terrified to drive the cars.

So, what happened to these cars during the storm that made driving these cars so terrifying?

Good luck.

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

The Trance

We have a very interesting puzzler ready for this week. Much better than last week, I promise!
This puzzler involves our trusted producer, Dougie.

This is something that happened a long time ago, so I'm going to
try to remember all the facts correctly.

Okay, here goes.

It was a hot and muggy night. Dougie is in a major, major city someplace. I think the city was Los Angeles. He was out there on some public radio shindig that he'd gotten free tickets to or something.

I'm even gonna give you the date. It was August 17th, 1992. So, this was a long, long time ago. It was around 10 o'clock at night, and Doug is heading east on route 10. He was about 50 miles outside of LA driving his old 1978 Cutlass Salon. Great car!

He's driving along and he passes a car stopped by the side of the road, this car just kind of pulled over. The driver's sitting in the car. The poor guy had broken down. What does Dougie do? He blows right by him and doesn't even slow down.

Over the next several miles, he sees several more cars and they're all stopped by the side of the road. And the people are just sitting in their cars. Now, he's thinking, if one of these people had trouble with their car, you would think that they would get out and open the hood and you look under there. You know, to see if there's something wrong with the engine. That's what you do when you're broken down on the side of the road. But none of them had done this. They are all pulled over to the side of the road and sitting there in the car, transfixed somehow just staring out into space like some alien tractor beam had to pull them over to the side of the road.

It was a hot, muggy night, August 17, 1992, in the city of Los Angeles, California. Over the next five miles, he sees like 10 more cars stopped at the side of the road. And none of the drivers of those cars are looking under the hood or changing tires or anything like that.

And he noticed that none of the passengers were talking. Nobody in the car was talking to anyone else in the car. He said it was like they were all almost in a trance.

So the question is, why were these cars pulled over? What had happened?

Good luck, my friends!