December 8th, I posted this:
Holy Freaking Hannah! Enough with the damn snow.
I’ve lived in Lovely London, Ontario Canada, for going on 30 odd years. In the heart of the, ‘snow belt’, that strip of land, between two great lakes, wherein you can get massive, ‘lake effect’, snow from either side, depending which way the wind blows. So, like, I’ve seen some bad storms, some huge snow falls, snow days that shut down the entire region, it’s all part of the fun of living in South Western Ontario.
But we are now on the ragged fringes of Biblical weather, where I am. A massive, slow moving cold air system is streaming across the, as yet unfrozen lakes, and dumping snow in a line that will not move off from over the city.
We’ve had, in excess of 100 cm of snow since in started over 2 days ago. We’ve had snow days before but I’ve never heard of 2 back to back, like we had today. Everyone spent yesterday, (roads, schools, uni, businesses all closed up), shoveling out, we’re talking about shifting, in excess of 4 ft of snow off everything. It took the whole damn day, and never once stopped snowing. I shoveled the walk out to the street, where there are no cars and are the only marginally passable places to trudge through, twice yesterday. When I awoke this morning, there was no evidence that I had even shoveled, you could not detect where the walk was, and only barely see a bump where the car was.
And, here’s the beautiful part, at close of business today, it was announced that the city is closed again tomorrow, no buses, no mail, no school, no uni. Closing the Uni is a huge deal here, this will be the third day in a row. That’s right, if you’re keeping score at home that’s 3 snow days in a freaking row. Besides they never announce such things the evening before. They traditionally make everyone in the city wake up early and listen/watch to discover what’s open or closed. Not today, it seems.
They seem to believe we could get another 25 - 45 cm overnight tonight, and, that it will snow all day tomorrow. There is literally nowhere to put any more snow.
(Of course, I have a wood stove, and cooked a yummy roast beef dinner, had friends in, all snug and warm, and well fed, in case you’re feeling sad for me.)
But please, please, please, mister weatherman, give us a break already, pass it on to someone else already! (My personal theory is that this is revenge for the awesome hot bakey summer we had, starting in May and running till the second week of September!)Yikes! I’m a little afraid to go to sleep, afraid of what I’ll awake to.
Followed by, on the 13th:
Sigh…
The last two days it warmed up to near zero, enough to make things slushy, but not enough to make a dent in the 4+ feet of snow everywhere. Today it is -12, with white out snow squalls called for. Everything that got slushy is now frozen, where the plows went by is now extremely heavy and frozen ice/snow, which must be cleared to get the car out.
And tomorrow, another 10 cm+ snow.
Sigh…
That same evening, my husband went out to help a woman across the road, coming home from a ski holiday, to an uncleared drive way, with a four wheel drive vehicle, started to dig out, found the iced over, packed snow too tough and decided to just plow through with her car. Managed to get the car stuck, such that it’s wheels weren’t actually touching the ground, well and truly stuck! She called someone to come pull her out, we told her to park in our cleared drive, overnight. (Hammerhead hubby, walked home from the pub after sharing more than intended Christmas cheer!)
Yesterday, less then a half days drive from here, 300 people were trapped in their cars and had to be rescued by the army, in some cases. Parts of the 400 series highways were closed, as sudden whiteout conditions accompanied by enormous snow fall sent people off the roads and into fields, etc. People spent the night camped in coffee shops, gas stations. Here is was intermittent squalls, with horizontal snow and high winds such that one is hardly able to see across the street. But then they would clear and as quickly, gone. And bitterly cold, -20 with the windchill.
This weather meant no garbage pick up last week, so we all dug plateaus into the enormous snow banks, and precarious balanced our stuff for curbside pick up. It was just beginning to snow again as we finished up, around 9pm. No mail delivery, except Friday, last week, and I’m waiting on a cheque, damn it!
By this mornings, 2 .5+ feet of snow had fallen. The garbage was buried, no evidence of all the clearing, walkways invisible! Snow day number 4, in 8 eights! I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and I’ve seen some storms!
I’m going to take some pictures!
When I was a kid and we had a dog, it was bad enough having an entire winter of dog poop surface in the yard each spring.
Kidding kidding…