Each year, State College becomes a little more like home for many students as the comforts of their hometowns arrive -- a Rita's opens, Comcast SportsNet appears on the cable system, etc.

And as technology increases -- cell phones become more popular, the Internet more widespread -- staying in touch with family and friends who are hundreds of miles away becomes so much easier. It helps to make Happy Valley seem so much closer to where you've come from.

But the reality is, Penn State is, in fact, in the middle of nowhere. And nothing exposes that isolation more than a snowstorm.

Anyone who drove here from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh over this weekend is aware of that. And I'm sure State College couldn't have seemed further away for people stranded in airports, coming back from Mexico or Florida or some other warm locale. I hate snow. You can call me a codger if you want, but I hate shoveling it, walking in it and driving in it. Sure it makes for a beautiful landscape the first morning, but then the mounds of snow get black from exhaust and your car looks like a saltlick.

I'm from the Philadelphia area, so I am used to getting a couple of inches of snow during the winter months. But here's the big difference when it comes to snowfall between Philadelphia and State College -- the news coverage.

I went to bed one night last week expecting to wake up to the warm weather we had been blessed with recently. But instead I awoke to about three inches of snow. Not necessarily a shocking thing in mid-March, but the absence of wall-to-wall news coverage of the "Blizzard of '07" surprised me a bit.

Being from Philadelphia, I'm used to constant coverage of any small snowstorm that had even the slightest chance of affecting the region. The major channels would break into regular programming to show the latest from their "Doppler 1 million," or the 15 projected courses the storm might take in the next few days. Watching the local news coverage of the impending storm and its aftermath was like watching a reality show.

Watching reporters, who are usually covering a serious topic, sticking rulers in the snow, or seeing the unedited footage of the interview with a truck driver leaving the local Wawa is priceless.

Admittedly I don't watch the local news much here. But it's not that I'm not interested. I read the local news and because a career in journalism is (hopefully) in my future, I definitely lap up as much news as possible. But local TV news coverage here leaves me wondering what planet these people came from. I understand State College isn't the largest market in the country, but it's shocking that snowstorms that cause the kind of school and business closings to scroll across the bottom of the screen don't get more coverage.

Another major difference between Philadelphia and State College during a snowstorm is a trip to the grocery store. Usually in the Philadelphia area that trip meant an empty wall where loaves of bread once were. Eggs and milk disappeared from the shelves as quickly as they were put out.

From the reaction, you would have thought Homeland Security had just raised the threat level to red. People acted as if they would be trapped in their homes for a week, and apparently milk, eggs and bread were all the sustenance they would need.

But that same trip here in the State College area showed no signs of the impending doom of an upcoming snowstorm. There were plenty of eggs, plenty of milk and a wall full of bread. It can't be that more people here own SUVs or four-wheel drive vehicles. People aren't inherently better drivers in this area, and it's not like we live in upstate New York where they're used to a couple feet of snow. And from what I've seen, they're certainly not any better at clearing the roads here than other places. So, why don't people freak out over a couple inches of snow? It has to be the lack of TV news coverage. I worked in the supermarket industry for a few years. And when the news started talking about a snowstorm it was time to get ready for the avalanche of customers. There were even rumors that the supermarkets would pay the stations to hype the storm, just to lead even more people into the stores.

A couple of years ago, stores started to run out of duct tape. It wasn't because people had a yearning to tape things together suddenly. It was because Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said it would be a good thing to have to protect yourself in the case of a terrorist attack.

So while many of the things I loved from the Philadelphia are now here in State College, the one thing I certainly miss is sitting at home on a cold wintry day watching TV reporters make fools of themselves because a couple of inches of snow dropped from the sky.