Monday, February 08, 2010

Snow. Snow. More Snow.

I had grand plans for the second half of last week. I have a Knitting Olympics post I need to share. And a kick-ass new hat that I love and that I can't wait to show you.

But there was nothing to show you on Wednesday that was different from the previous Wednesday. (Like literally nothing. How boring is that?). I spent Thursday doing a job application for a part-time position that I think would be a really good fit. Then, Friday happened.

They said the snow was going to start around lunchtime. At about 12:05 pm, someone “hit the switch” and the snow started. It was freaky that the weather reports were so dead-on accurate on the timeline.

JustStarting.jpg

This was around 4 p.m. EST on Friday. A little snow, but really not much.

Pretty shortly after the Hubster got home – he left the office shortly after 3 p.m., and I picked him up at the Castle Shannon trolley stop around 4:25 p.m. – it really started to come down.

We went to sleep knowing that we probably had about eight inches on the ground. I woke up at about 2:45 a.m. and realized almost instantly that we didn’t have any electricity. Or heat. Went back to sleep.

Woke up again at 7 a.m. I couldn’t go back to sleep without having an idea of how long we’d been without power, so I came downstairs and poked around for a while. Figured out the power went out about 1 a.m. It was chilly in the house, but not too bad. Yet. Went back to bed. Hey, it wasn’t really daylight yet and it was still snowing!

Streetlight.jpg


I got moving around 9:30 a.m. It was instantly apparent that there was a lot of snow on the ground.

MeasureBackyard.jpg

Those snow-covered lines are the dead power lines. We were power-free for 36 hours.

And just as much in the back yard. That yardstick is showing 24 inches of snow. That’s TWO FEET. Yikes.

CtrDormer.jpg


It pretty much took the whole morning to clear the front walk. Front walk isn’t straight, so it was a bit of a guessing game to figure out where I needed to shovel next. Oh, and I was shoveling solo, since Hubster is still on injured reserve with a broken collarbone. He’s healing, but hasn’t healed enough to deal with this kind of snow.

House6Feb.jpg


By early afternoon, I had dug out enough to get over to SuperNeighbor’s house and start on his driveway. If the power didn’t come back on by nightfall, Option #1 was to make it over to my parents house, but walking would be a nightmare and their condo complex had barely been touched by plows. Therefore, no place to park.

Option #2 was staying at SuperNeighbor’s house. Fortunately, by mid-afternoon, enough neighbors had gotten out to say that if you were careful, the roads weren’t unreasonable. I quit shoveling around 4:30 p.m. in order to shower and pack. SuperNeighbor drove us over to my parents house, where we spent the night. Power company had our side of the street back to 2010 technology by roughly noon on Sunday, and we were home right after the Penguins game … shortly after 3 p.m. House was cold, but it was good to be home.

7FebSunset.jpg


Links after the pictures will take you to my Flickr set with more detailed descriptions of each photo. Enjoy!

SnowMosaic1.jpg


1. CtrDormer.jpg, 2. CleanCorolla.jpg, 3. 7FebOfficeDormer.jpg, 4. Streetlight.jpg, 5. Icicles2.jpg, 6. JustStarting.jpg, 7. MeasureBackyard.jpg, 8. 8FebHouse.jpg, 9. BuriedCorolla.jpg, 10. CoveredCorolla.jpg, 11. OfficeDormer.jpg, 12. Roof6FebDusk.jpg, 13. Icicles1.jpg, 14. Dogwood.jpg, 15. FrontLattice.jpg, 16. Allenberry.jpg, 17. MeasureFront2.jpg, 18. 21inches.jpg, 19. 7FebSunset.jpg, 20. Frontyard.jpg, 21. House6Feb.jpg, 22. Woodbridge.jpg, 23. WoodbridgeMboxes.jpg

6 comments:

floribunda said...

your first photo -- "a little snow, but really not much" -- looks like PLENTY of snow to me!

Donna Lee said...

And we're getting more tonight......I am so not used to this.

Jenn said...

It was really weird the way it started snowing like someone threw a switch. There was never any light snow at our house, it went from nothing to really coming down in about 30 seconds.

I am SO GLAD that we didn't lose power. Growing up in the boonies we lost power frequently and spent many a winter storm in the dark for a long time.

Sarah said...

Count me in the "so glad we didn't lose power" camp. Aside from the fact that the city always does a horrendous job of snow removal, they never touch our street, so we were literally snowed in for a couple of days. Thankfully my mother offered to do some grocery shopping for us on Friday and then my parents came over for dinner. They managed to get out before the roads got too too bad, otherwise they would have been stuck here with us for the whole weekend! (Strangely, something similar happened during the blizzard of '93 -- my grandmother came over for dinner and wound up staying for a week!)

Heather said...

and it looks like we are in for round 2! Crazy. But the kids are LOVING playing in the snow, and I a LOVING sending them out to play in it! heh. But we are going to be in school until July...

Zonda said...

Wow! Hope you guys don't get much more. Yes, I am jealous, of all 24" of it.

Take care you two!