Please allow me to interject my feelings about Mother Nature

Here it was the Blizzard of '93. Birmingham, Al got an honest to god blizzard, thundersnow, the whole deal. 18" of snow overnight, on top of frozen rain and sleet. We froze in the dark for four long days. Not my idea of a good time.

 

My in-laws went five weeks without electricity at their farm after a big ice storm in the early 2000s. After that, my FIL bought a gigantic whole-house generator attached to a dedicated propane tank the size of a 15-passenger van. They've not been without electricity for more than five seconds since then.

 

Guilty as charged!

 

I've got plans for a big pot of soup tomorrow night. Here in the Metromess, highs are not projected to get above freezing for several days, with various cold precip falling.

The nice thing is: most of the time, when any measure of winter weather happens, if you can stay home, they tell you to stay home. In Kansas, I was still going to school with the propane tank in the backyard buried in a snowdrift.

 

I think it was in 2009, but in late March we got 16 inches of snow. Completely hit us out of nowhere. But at least it was snow and you could get around if you didn't drive stupid.

 

School closures* already hitting for tomorrow.

* - There’s part of me that thinks it’s unfair to the kids to eliminate snow days because you can pivot to virtual learning thanks to your Covid plan.

 

Having lived in the upper Midwest and now the Northwest, I've seen it all ... and without question, the worst is a heavy, wet snowstorm followed by a cold front.

Sloppy roads during the storm turn to icy roads with ruts once the cold and wind kicks in. Add blowing/drifting snow for poor visibility and it's brutal for driving.

Good luck to all of you across the Midwest and South. Be careful out there!

 

This thread would be so much more interesting if respondents would list the town they are writing about.

 

Well, Podunk, Bumfuckville and Bumblefuckburg are all 15 minutes away from Tahoe. Take it from there.

 

There was a bout of freezing rain followed by a cold snap when I was in Memphis to cover Doug Flutie's BC team in the Liberty Bowl in 1982. My hotel was out by the airport, and the drive into town on the Interstate was amazing, cars spun out into the median or off the road about every 400 yards. Looked like photos of the road to Baghdad in the Iraq War.

 

There's a lot of me that thinks it's unfair to teachers. I don't know how all systems do it, but we build in snow days by going to school 30 mins extra each day throughout the year. That builds up 10 snow days. If we don't use them, then that means we worked 10 days for free. Now if they want to pay me my daily rate for the extra 10, I'm good with that.