Like about a quarter of the US population, we got hit by the snow event named Jonas 2 weekends ago. For at least a week beforehand, we heard hype and warnings and altered forecasts. At first, I think we expected a good snow but not too bad as predictions seem like they are often overblown, at least around here. As the week wore on and we grew more and more tired of hearing about the storm of the decade, it became apparent that we were going to get a good covering with a really good chance of a wet snow which would lead to widespread power outages.
Starting Wednesday or so, people started to really pound the grocery stores to stock up on milk, eggs and bread…I guess to make their emergency French toast. We shop on Sundays most times so we avoided the mess, but I hear a lot of places were cleaned out. Thursday was a really weird time as all forecasts pretty much pointed tot he same thing…we were going to get a lot of snow. I went to the office on Friday morning as usual. The sky was dark but there was no snow at that point. Almost on the hour, at 9. the snow started. I think by 9:07 we had an inch. Well, that might be an exaggeration, but it came quickly. We closed the office by 9:30 and by 10 when I left, it was questionable as to whether I would make it home. My car had no problem, but lots of folks in two-wheel drive vehicles were pretty much screwed. I weaved through a developing parking lot on the main road up the hill to my neighborhood.
We hunkered down and basically waited and watched. Snow piled up very quickly. Fortunately, the temperature didn’t rise enough to produce the wet snow they expected so we never lost power. We stepped out occasionally to measure snow, but it was accumulating so fast that we quickly gave up.
Saturday morning, we found that it was still snowing, but not nearly as hard. I tried to open my front door at some point but found it was snowed closed. I had to go out another door and shovel my front door open. That sucked a little. I took a few quick measurements which pretty closely coincided with the official measurement of 18.6 inches when it was all said and done. I measured as high as 21 inches but all things vary of course.
The city was a bit of a mini-disaster as people had abandoned cars all over. Plow trucks were working hard but we don’t usually see snow this deep and fast so they just couldn’t keep up, try as they might. We started baking cookies Saturday sometime and baked our way out of butter so, by Sunday, wanted to get out so we could bake/eat more. Our road had not been plowed at all though, and we figured that, with the chaos all over, they wouldn’t be getting to us any time soon. Our driveway is maybe 50 feet long and very steep. We started with it, hoping that would entice the plow trucks to come and plow us in, much like washing a car encourages rain.
Finally, we decided to just go for it and we shoveled out our neighborhood road from our place to the main road which was somewhat passable. I’d say that road is maybe 100 feet long where we were interested. My wife, my amazing workhorse of a wife and I shoveled out the road as well. It wasn’t a lot of fun, but we had eaten a lot of cookies so figured it balanced out pretty evenly, calorie-wise.
First the driveway
A lot of roads are still not passable, but I was able to get to the office. Schools are still closed, wisely. The biggest problem now, is where to put the snow that the highway crews are plowing. Our road was finally plowed out after dark, about 60 hours after the snow started. That’s not terrible with all things considered, but I am glad we dug out ahead of time. Let’s hope it takes at least another decade before we see this again!
