We were pretty convinced Tuesday morning that the blizzard was going to be a non-event. We based this on the fact that we kept glancing out the sliding glass door by our dining room into the back yard and seeing minimal snow accumulation. Plenty of tiny snow flakes zooming through the air, but barely anything landing.
So around 4pm we thought, "Let's do that quick run to Walmart incase it really does get bad tonight."
And that was our first encounter with the Front Yard. This is how far we got.
Yup, about half way out the driveway. Turns out we already had about 7" of snow with a nice layer of ice underneath. Walmart trip aborted and 20 minutes to get car back into garage.
And we started to get a small hint as to which side of our house was going to end up with the monstrous drifts.
So we stayed cozy inside and said all the clever and original things everyone else in the Midwest was saying. Things like,
5:00 pm: "Wow, that's a lot of snow!"
5:30 pm: "Mommy, is this the Blizzard yet?"
6:00 pm: "Huh, look at that wind!"
6:30 pm: "Mommy, now is this another Blizzard?"
7:00 pm: "Look at that snow drift!"
7:30 pm: "Mommy, is this STILL the Blizzard?"
8:00 pm: "Still snowin'!" and so on and so forth.
Wednesday morning, we woke to this. It is impossible to get good perspective in snow shots, but this is the best I've got:
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| This snow drift is approximately 3 1/2' deep and runs straight across our entry way. |
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| This is peeking around the corner of our garage. The bottom of the brick had maybe 4" of snow, but a foot or two out from it towered another 3'-4' drift. |
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| The back porch did eventually get its 2' drifts. |
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| It was so windy that snow actually blew into the cracks around closed windows. |
Wednesday's recreation: dig out the driveway.
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| We expect to reopen our front door for use around the first of March. |
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| About 4 hours into shoveling. Note that at this point MedMan had reached the street. The plow, however, had plowed the middle grassy island of our cul de sac instead of the actual road, so Medman got to shovel an additional 12' or so. The lucky guy. He really enjoyed his snow day. |
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| A close up of shoveling for perspective's sake. And this was the shallow end of the driveway. |
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| Or neighbor, Bob, proved that he is an influential man in town with powerful friends. Grandpa Hank showed up on his tractor and cleared off the last 15' of Bob's driveway in about 10 minutes. Hank did not, however, think Medman influential or powerful enough to help. (Do you like D's little buried basketball hoop?) |
And no, there are no kids-frolicking-in-the-snow pictures. It's a windchill of -10, people.
We had quite a dumping, too. But then it turned sunny and pleasant and was actually good playing outside weather, except Molly Jo couldn't walk because the snow was up to her waist.
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