We'll admit it. The prospect of a mega snowstorm, makes us freak out a bit. We Marylanders love to make panicked last-minute trips to the grocery store for toilet paper and milkat the sight of a flurry. But the storm on its way this afternoon could be huge -- smacking the area with as much as 2 feet.

Hospitals are bracing for it too by fine-tuning contingency plans, jump-starting emergency command centers and making sleeping arrangements for critical staff, from hotel reservations to outfitting hospital units with free beds.

Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Anne Arundel Medical Center and the University of Maryland Medical Center have volunteers with four-wheel-drive vehicles on hand to drive people to work if they can't make it on their own. During December's blizzard, GBMC used its emergency command unit to notify the National Guard to order a Humvee to pick up nurses who lived in rural Harford County and take them to the Towson hospital, said Michael Schwartzberg, a GBMC spokesman.

Hospital administrators said they made improvements after December's record-setting blizzard. "We are reaching out more broadly to the medical staff earlier," said Herbert C. Buchanan Jr., chief operating officer for the University of Maryland Medical Center. "We have tightened up the processes.

Meanwhile, I learned this cool tidbit from the folks at the state's emergency medical systems: most of the state's firetrucks and ambulances are outfitted with technology that with a click, enables chains to be switched onto tires so the vehicles can drive safely through the snow and ice. How very Transformers of them. I so need those on my car.

So, how are you prepping for the big snow? 

Baltimore Sun photo