SNOW????

[LarryHoward]

image.jpeg

What we woke up to. Frozen creek in the background.

[Tim Ford]

That's nice!!! I want your home.

[LarryHoward]

That's nice!!! I want your home.

Come shovel the driveway. We'll talk.

[Orestes Munn]

OK. Girding my loins, such as they are, for the first uphill assault on the basement stairs.

[Slick470]

Just came in from about a 2.5 hour stint. Got the front porch, the main walk to the street, one of the 4x4s dug out, and the back walk and stairs down to the basement. I'm beat. Glad I waited on the outer drive as right as I was about to come in a plow came by and made that pile a couple feet deeper. I'll hit that later.

Still coming down and very gusty here.

[LarryHoward]

View to windward. Some days, that cove is filled with Scantlingers.

Chris is up so we talking about when he will shovel the porch and see if he can rig up the plow. Be nice to run it up and down the drive a few times.

[Bull City]

We were at home yesterday, today and will be tomorrow. We lucked out: about 2" of sleet and snow, but none of the dreaded freezing rain, the menace of trees and power lines. Right now, it's about 30º F with occasional light snow. It's supposed to be sunny and 40º tomorrow. I may do a little shoveling.

[slap]

Around 11am today:



My old Sable wagon lost its spot in the garage to the new car.

We're going to get as much as another foot.

[slap]

I live 18 miles from the White House, 5 miles outside the Washington Beltway. We are supposed to get 20+ inches of snow.

So what did I do to get ready? I bought a convertible on Thursday.



Now my son wants to learn how to drive a manual.

Oooh nice! You're a number 1 dad for even thinking of letting your son touch that ride. And those extreme summers look perfect for the snow.

Helps that it's a used car. It already has some scratches and dings.

[Orestes Munn]

Well, thirty years of gym fees and countless painful hours, plus my wife's Amazonian strength and stamina, just saved me fifty bucks, and a neighbor with a blower did the sidewalk. Bad news is there's going to be another foot on the ground in the morning.

Time for a purely medicinal shot of poteen from the bottle the freezer.

Where you live at, slap?

[slap]

Well, thirty years of gym fees and countless painful hours, plus my wife's Amazonian strength and stamina, just saved me fifty bucks, and a neighbor with a blower did the sidewalk. Bad news is there's going to be another foot on the ground in the morning.

Time for a purely medicinal shot of poteen from the bottle the freezer.

Where you live at, slap?

Bowie.

[Bull City]

From the NYT: In Case of Blizzard, Do Nothing by David Dudley

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/opini ... ef=opinion

In the winter of 1985 my hometown, Buffalo, was engulfed in a blizzard — not an uncommon occurrence for the region, which is justly famed for epic snows. But this was a big one, and the city’s blustery Irish-American mayor, Jimmy Griffin, was at pains to persuade people to stop trying to go about their business as conditions deteriorated. He urged Buffalonians to “relax, stay inside and grab a six-pack,” which must be the best advice any elected official ever gave the public in an emergency situation.

There’s something cartoonish about the menace of a blizzard, in which nature’s wrath assumes a fluffy, roly-poly form and tries to kill you. It’s the meteorological equivalent of getting smothered in Tribbles, or attacked by the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. And yet, kill it does, via car accidents and heart attacks and other misadventures, usually involving people trying, unwisely, to do something.

Mr. Griffin, henceforth known as Jimmy Six-Pack, understood this. The Snow Gods reserve special contempt for those who don’t respect their ability to bring human activity to a standstill. The snow cares not for your deadlines, your happy hour plans, your scheduled C-section. It wants only to fall on the ground and lie there. And it wants you to, too.

Needless to say, you should. Unless you’re a plow driver or a parka-clad elected official trying to look essential, one doesn’t pretend to do battle against a blizzard. You submit. Surrender. Hunker down. A snowstorm rewards indolence and punishes the go-getters, which is only one of the many reasons it’s the best natural disaster there is.

Jimmy Six-Pack also understood that snow functions as an arbiter of government effectiveness. (He stayed in office for 16 years.) In New York City, Mayor John Lindsay’s lax response to a 1969 storm forever dinged his political fortunes. Cities need blizzards every few years to flush out incompetents, expose incipient dysfunction and generally stress-test the fabric of civilization. Like war, illness and poker, snow ruthlessly reveals true character.

And, gloriously if briefly, it hides everything else — the plastic grocery bags and mini-marts and dog poop and salt-grimed Toyotas and sundry disorder of modernity. Watching the quotidian American crudscape transform into a fairy-tale kingdom is a legitimate wonder. Name another disaster that leaves the afflicted region more attractive in its wake.

I’ve never quite lost my amazement at this phenomenon, the suddenness with which the familiar vanishes and a new, better landscape appears. Time has partly buried my childhood memories of Buffalo’s mighty blizzard of 1977, but I still recall the hallucinogenic dislocation of the great drifts that climbed over houses, the spectacle of a world made thrillingly new. It’s a vision that seems freshly haunting now, as we face the dread prospect of a climate changed by human appetites — the future winters, soggy and snowless, that await us all. Before it’s too late, let us all now pause, perhaps over a six-pack, and bear witness as the climate changes us.

[Tim Ford]

there's a couple cars in here...a Mini Paceman is one of 'em, so they say. Looks more like a Deux Chevaux.

DSC_9697.JPG

[Tim Ford]

Here's one reason why we are getting totally bludgeoned with this beast....here are two screen shots from different GOES images I got about 4.5 hours apart...look at how much the storm center has moved...ugly.

storm jan 23 2016.jpg

4-15 Sat Jan 23.jpg

[LarryHoward]

Tim. That sucks.

We got a bit of a break this afternoon. Went to very light snow showers but the wind stayed up. Got the porch shoveled and then McGuyvered the plow set up. Spent a couple of hours plowing the drive and the wAlk from the drive to the porch. Since it's all gravel it was a test of how low could we go. My guess we are now down to an inch or so over the gravel and that's fine. Cleared off the cars enough to be legal and a few minutes ago the snow picked up so we put everything away and came in.

I'm gonna like my new toy. I figured a foot was about what it was capable of pushing and it did in low range 4wd with unlocked hubs and no chains so it has more to give.

Time for a toddie and a sit by the fire.

[Tim Ford]

found a protected spot, undrifted and unblown, in the backyard: 28 inches and still snowing. Tomorrow is going to be pain full

[LarryHoward]

found a protected spot, undrifted and unblown, in the backyard: 28 inches and still snowing. Tomorrow is going to be pain full

You win.

We have had another 2" since sunset but I can live with that.

[Orestes Munn]

Snow has stopped here. Tomorrow won't be too awful, if we can find someplace to throw the stuff.

[LarryHoward]

Snow has stopped here. Tomorrow won't be too awful, if we can find someplace to throw the stuff.

We just pushed it into big piles on either side of the drive.

[Orestes Munn]

Snow has stopped here. Tomorrow won't be too awful, if we can find someplace to throw the stuff.

We just pushed it into big piles on either side of the drive.

Things are somewhat more spatially constrained here. It's snowing again.

[LarryHoward]

Nice morning. No wind and bright sunshine. We got another 3 inches before it stopped around midnight so some cleanup remaining. The deck, with drifts over 3 feet, may have to clear itself naturally.

[cap10ed]

Deltaville dodged the bullet. A dusting of 3" and melting. The menace looks like it is going out to sea now.

[Orestes Munn]

image.jpeg

[LarryHoward]

image.jpeg

Nice.

About that heated driveway you mentioned???

[Orestes Munn]

image.jpeg

Nice.

About that heated driveway you mentioned???

Never went for it. We don't even had the lights I wanted in the stonework.

[SemiSalt]

We got 7-9 inches although it was reported as a foot in some places. We are about 30 miles ENE of NYC where 30 inches was reported.

[Orestes Munn]

They haven't plowed any of the neighborhood streets yet and schools will are closed through Tues. Tomorrow, I'll throw on a backpack and go in search of antipasto/mezze, good cheese, and whatnot, to go with all the wine I am planning to drink. Tonight, a red bean soup with smoked chorizo, cornbread, and maybe a few members of the Shiner Bock variety pack that Santa got for Boyfriend, and he didn't get to drink because he was so fascinated with Pabst.

[Ajax]

I couldn't have timed a vasectomy any better. I've barely lifted a finger all weekend.

[Orestes Munn]

I have long maintained that snow shoveling is women's work.

[Tim Ford]

Apres cinq heures avec M. Shovelle....someone...just...shoot me.

DSC_9731.JPG

I call it the Kumba Ice Falls.