Snowstorms can cause serious headaches for politicians, as Chris Christie and Mike Bloomberg discovered anew after last month’s Boxing Day Blizzard. Rhode Island officials learned the same lesson – painfully – after the famous December debacle of 2007.

With my colleague Tony Petrarca and our other WPRI meteorologists forecasting a major Nor’easter to hit Rhode Island early Wednesday morning, the Chafee administration is set to get its first big test from Mother Nature just a week after taking office. When I called spokesman Mike Trainor earlier tonight, he couldn’t talk because he was on a conference call with the R.I. Emergency Management Agency.

Chafee loved running a city – heard about how he used to be mayor of Warwick? – so managing the response to a big storm could be right up his alley. Or he could get the blame when schoolchildren are stranded on I-95.

Either way, storms are one of those relatively rare times when average citizens experience government firsthand – the DMV is another one – so the Chafee folks would be well advised to be on their game this week, no matter how the storm turns out.