Sharpen your corkscrews, everyone. Snow’s coming.

I plan to stay inside and drink till it melts.

If it snows, that is. Long-time residents of Virginia’s coastal “rain belt” are skeptical of snowy forecasts. 

Depending on which meteorologist you believe, we could get as many as 12 inches over the next two days. Worse, The Washington Post calls what’s heading toward the East Coast a “bomb cyclone”: a storm with “damaging winds and blinding snow.“

Not sure how a “bomb cyclone” differs from what normal people call a “blizzard,” but the scary new term is ginning up the hysteria.

And isn’t that the job of hyperbolic forecasters: To scare us into clearing out the supermarkets?

In other words, if you waited till now to stock up on snowstorm staples you may be out of luck. At 8 p.m. Tuesday I nabbed one of the last 18-egg cartons from my local grocery and the toilet paper shelves were alarmingly empty.  

Yep, we’re in the grips of a full-blown Southern Snowstorm Panic.

The same locals who will surf in a hurricane and run a marathon in 100-degree heat, lose their ability to reason - or drive - before the first flakes fall.

That’s understandable. Southerners are generally unprepared for snow.

Heck, many of us don’t have hats, let alone snow shovels. Last time it snowed, I raked my porch while my neighbors swept theirs with an old broom. I saw one guy trying to clear snow off his car with a sheet of cardboard. I caught another scraping his windshield with a Coke can. 

Beyond that, the cities of Tidewater never invested much in snow plows, so side streets go unplowed, which means two inches of snow can close schools and businesses for days during a cold snap.

That’s good, because no one who’s lived in the South for a decade or more should be allowed to drive on snowy roads. Remember the Great Blizzard of 2006 when an inch of snow fell across Virginia and the state police recorded 160 crashes?

The whole country was laughing at us. We even made the Drudge Report: “Virginia Drivers Cause Over 100 Accidents In Less Than One Inch Of Snow.”

Snowstorms were made for kids, of course. They get to stay home from school and, well, watch TV if they live in this little corner of Virginia where sea-level City Hall spoilsports outlawed sledding on Virginia Beach’s only decent hill years ago.

I’m referring, of course, to the majestic Mt. Trashmore, jutting 65 feet in the sky: southeastern Virginia’s Everest.

That boneheaded ban was driven by a fear of lawsuits after the mother of an injured sledder successfully sued the Beach.

Yep, a city that runs skateboard parks and sees runners collapse in road races, won’t let local kids slide down a snowy hill.

Sigh.

However you plan to spend the Blizzard of ‘18 - I refuse to use the name The Weather Channel is pushing - be sure you have gallons of your favorite beverage, a rake and a hat.

You’ll be fine.