Snow and Weather [NOT 15/12/20]

15/12/20 Elliecoo 33

We are due for a walloping big snowstorm tomorrow – 12-18 inches, or more, 2-3inches an hour at some points, plus ice. The new snowblower is oiled, gassed, and ready. I work from home, so no snow day. And the four small doggos are not fans of rain or snow. Do you like snow? Do live in a place that gets a lot of snow, or rain, or exciting weather? We had no snowfall last year, so this is weather god’s revenge, I figure. Hit me with your best weather stories, and/or your weather likes and dislikes.

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About Elliecoo 560 Articles
Four dogs, one partner. The dogs win.

33 Comments

  2. I remember the Blizzard of ’78.  Even living in Wisconsin, we’d gotten a shitload of snow.  Plus, because we were in farm country, the winds would create 30-foot drifts in some areas and no snow in others.  My brother and I made an entire network of snow tunnels and little rooms.  It was pretty impressive for a couple of kids with zero understanding of how engineering worked.  There was so much snow that we were quite insulated and could take off most of our outdoor gear and be comfortable.  Of course, getting across to the barns with the horses was…challenging.  There was too much snow for my dad to clear it with the snow plow, so we had to do a lot of trudging through huge piles of snow until our feet had packed it enough over time to create paths.
     
    I loved snow when I was a kid and snow meant sledding and generally playing around.  As an adult, I fucking hate snow.  We’re supposed to get about a foot this week.

    • Snow forts sound fun! I am with you regarding snow dislike these days. We rarely get a lot of it, so the infrastructure to remove snow isn’t terrific.  Roads remain less than drivable for longer than you would think…

    • My parents lived in SE Wisconsin at that time (I wasn’t on the scene quite yet), and they were in the process of moving to their new house from an upstairs flat in a remodeled 1800’s farmhouse when that storm hit. I’ve heard some stories about it!

    • Oh yeah, the blizzard of ’78! We had a stay at home order but my mother went to work, at a hair salon, like a total asshole and people actually went to have their hair done. She had this station wagon, a Vista Cruiser I think, and she couldn’t make it home. I went to rescue her…in a 1971 turquoise blue AMC Gremlin, with vacuum wipers, so they would stop when you accelerated. You had to lurch along, giving it gas, letting off the gas so the wipers would run and then lurch ahead again. Hey it got us home, when her giant station wagon floundered. That’s my best snow story, nowadays the minute I see a flake I am hunkered down.

  3. No snow here in my part of SoCal. I love the snow and it’s pretty sad that I’ve only experienced it a few times in my life. The last time I saw snow was 3 years ago when I went to Crater Lake in Oregon. There was just a tiny bit of snow on the ground but it made me stupidly happy to see it. 

  4. I grew up only getting to see snow when we traveled so when I moved to the NW I was super excited.  The first winter I was here we had a huge storm that closed down the city (2 feet here shuts down everything) all side roads and hills are shut down which means kids sledding and I was snowboarding down any steep hills I could find.  I didn’t know what to expect when I’m strapping in at the top of Main St. and a cop drives by and he just shakes his head.  Many years later after having kids, our whole neighborhood shut down for about a week after Xmas and nobody could get into our neighborhood without a big truck since they don’t have enough plows for side roads.  I pulled out my snowmobiles and started giving kids rides around our neighborhood and packing down the snow for the regular 4×4 vehicles.  Well, it is illegal to drive snowmobiles on public roads and I did such a good job packing the roads that the cops were able to get in and track me down.   I was having a beer with some neighbors when a cop pulled up and told me I couldn’t drive on the roads and I needed to stop.  I told him I would ride home but he said I had to get my truck and pick up the sleds.  I was like, sure.  As soon as he was gone, I rode the sleds home and went out with a shovel to hide all my tracks.  Never found out what fucking neighbor ratted me out for giving kids rides around the hood.  My current neighborhood has too many hills for cops to get up so I did the same thing here some years later with better results but finally sold the snowmobiles since I stopped having time & snow to use them.  

    • grew up in the northeast, so usually got a fair bit of snow most winters.  As a kid, making snow shelters and such was fun.  By the time I was a teen, I had pretty much learned to dread the mess it makes once it melts.  Sometimes it would be cool to go wandering around the fields at night, especially with a full moon.
      Currently in California.  Last time I saw snow was probably a backpacking trip I did up in Mendocino Forest, Snow Mountain Wilderness area.  about eleven years ago?  Was snow up in the higher elevations, and some light snowing during parts of the trip, but wasn’t too cold, so that was kinda cool.  Did completely loose the trail with the snow obscuring everything.  Lots of bad judgement and questionable decision making on that trip, but saw some cool stuff, had a good time, and all that.

  5. I live in Atlanta – so if we get snow – it’s like that movie Day After Tomorrow around here. Even though in our defense we don’t get snow every year – or even most years and it freezes so it’s more ice than snow. 

  6. We don’t get a lot of snow here but just before Thanksgiving we had an inch and a half. No big deal. But on my morning walk I met two little boys that had moved here from Texas and never seen snow. They were having the best time. They told me about sledding, demonstrated how to make snow angels, and showed me how to make snowballs. Their mom was exhausted but enjoying their excitement. 

  7. Most winters we get a few times where we get a few inches, typically nothing that bad. 

    HOWEVER

    MODOT likes to wait until after freezing rain or snow starts before sending out the salt trucks, so typically traffic is a dangerous mess and those bastards have the audacity to get on the evening news and be like “well if people get off the roads, we could treat them and there wouldn’t be problems.”

    So like people get stuck on the highway for 3-4 hours because of poor planning. 

      • Yuck. My Alaskan friends just roll their eyes when I talk about snowstorms. Then they trot out 60 below and four feet of snow in a day stories. When it comes to snowpocalypse, they always win. I consider that to be a dubious honor.

  10. I love snow… When I’m sitting inside, looking at it through a window, tucked under a blanket, holding a nice, warm mug of cocoa. Going out in it is a whooooole different story. I hate that part. 
     
    Last year, Other-Husband was leaving work the day after a major snow fall, and he slipped on ice in the poorly plowed parking lot. He didn’t get back to work until 3 months (and a $40,000 surgery to pin his shattered forearm back together) later. 

  11. A few years ago after a killer storm just about everyone on the block chipped in for a communal snow  blower. Since then I think it has been bad enough to use once. So I guess as a magic item it’s worked.

    • We did that too, maybe ten years ago? It has finally gone to snow blower heaven, and Keitel is the proud owner (as of Monday) of one of his very own. He is happy. Power tools…

  12. i love snow and ice…but live in the wrong part of the world for it
    nowadays anyways…used to be i’d be able to skate on natural ice every winter but thats becoming a rarity… but even back then we rarely got huge amounts of snow here
    tends to be cold and dry here or wet but too warm for snow
    the last white christmas here was in 2010 (tho…typically…we get a cold snap round november…december is wet and too warm and winter proper happens round february)

  13. I haaaaaaate winter, cold, and snow.
    It’s not terrible, if you don’t need to be out *in* it, or drive…
    And being a lifelong Minnesotan, I CAN drive in it…
    But I hate it.
     
    I like to joke that my loathing is a  part of who I am… I was born in February–three weeks late, because that winter was a BITCH of a cold one…. and I didn’t wanna come out into it–i wanted to stay INSIDE!!!😉
    My poor mom.
     
    The day I was born, the weather folks were predicting a blizzard–so dad stayed home & didn’t go out ice fishing, in case he got stuck out in the fish house…
    Mom was in labor for 36 hours (I REALLY didn’t wanna come out into that cold, apparently! But surprisingly,I WASN’T greeted with that Blizzard.
     
    I DO kinda remember those big storms in the late 70’s, when you had snowdrifts that went up to the eaves (and OVER trailer houses!), and I REALLY remember the ones in ’80-82, there were a couple with 3′-4′ SNOWFALLS–and the drifts again got up to roofs.
     
    Then there was the Halloween Blizzard–back when I was a freshman in high school.
     
    And there were a few wicked storms–like those late 70’s/early 80’s storms–back in the mid 90’s, when I went to NDSU. 
    Those were the first years that the ENTIRE state of ND got shut down, except for emergency vehicles, because of a combo of snow, and below-zero (degrees Fahrenheit, so deadly!!) Temps.
     
    A couple years after those mid-90’s storms, the interstate highway up around where I grew up got gates to shut down the road, because some folks had driven around/past the state troopers who were directing traffic off the road, then got stuck, and needed rescuing–endangering too many lives of first-responders in the process (not just their own!) 
     
    The gates fully block the westbound on-ramps, and span the whole westbound lane of traffic at the last off-ramp,so that traffic CAN’T get through & has to exit… 
    Those sorts of gates are fairly common in ND, where I-90, I-94, and I-29 get shut down with some regularity, but until about 1997-8, they were REALLY uncommon in MN.
    They’ve been used multiple times, in the ensuing years, and have helped keep lots of folks safe.
     

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