BLIZZARD!

Cold here in norcal this AM. Damn uninsulated house anway.

Your problem is that you don't live far enough north. Northern Michigan, even the northern LP, has much better weather than downstate. You want snow? Go to Kalamazoo. They always get clobbered.

Traverse City (image updates):

This isn't deep enough for me. I want a snow storm!

Now this is a decent storm. Dosen't it look cozy?






Makes me want to walk through the door, throw some wood in the fireplace, grab a book, and read with a blanky on me.

We made it to hamburger's just at the front edge of that buggery storm. Not a fun drive, but more fun for us than all of those poor buggers who ended up in ditches. Lots of them the last 50 miles of our drive

Snowing again now. Nice to layer on top of the ice that arrived after the snow. mmmmmhmmmmmmm.

Thanks for thinking of me, rjb! Yes, I got pummeled. Totally pummeled. Our poor elm tree is looking mighty scraggly as many, many branches (big 'uns) broke off, and we have a leak in the living room ceiling, but that's about the extent of the permanent damage (thus far anyway.)

And it is absolutely gorgeous out there. Everything is still (still!!) coated with about 3/8 inch of ice, and when you look down the street towards the sun, it looks like something created by Pixar -- just incredibly otherwordly surreally beautiful.

The pummeled part is that our power was knocked out early Thursday morning and stayed out until late Friday afternoon. This with below zero temps (windchill). That meant Thursday night was a long, ugly, and mind-blowingly COOOOOOOOOOOOOLD night. We have a fireplace and built our first-ever fire, and that made things reasonably bearable through most of the day Thursday, we just hung out by the fire and I like stitched some handmade ornaments and sozlet drew and we felt very frontier-y and tough. That was actually fun. But it gave us a false sense of security about what would happen that night.

My father-in-law says that the thing about a fireplace is it sucks up the warm air in the house, so it's not only radiating heat, it's consuming it. That would make sense for why it was OK during the day but got way too cold at night, after the warm air in the house was used up. (The house got down to around 40 or so.)

E.G. slept on the couch and was in charge of keeping the fire going. We dragged sozlet's mattress downstairs and she and I slept there, under 5 yes five wool blankets, a down comforter, and a laterally folded polarfleece blanket for our heads.

Not enough.

I spent most of the night a) checking how cold sozlet's face was, b) panicking at the lunchmeat temperature, c) putting a blanket lightly over her face, d) holding open a complicated system of vents to get fresh air in that had traveled far enough that it had warmed up, e) keeping her from kicking off the blankets (she likes to go to sleep under blankets but then kicks them off in her sleep -- grrr), f) worrying that she wasn't getting enough fresh air, removing the blanket from over her, and putting the polarfleece snugly around her head and cheeks and chin but leaving a little space for her nose. Then I'd drop off to sleep, warily, wake up, and start over at a.

It was miserably cold.

E.G. did a good job of keeping the fire going but it just didn't seem to DO much. Again, in terms of what FIL said, it seemed to be dragging cold air over us, toward the fire, more than radiating heat towards us. (Obviously we didn't want to sleep too too close, we were about 8 feet away.)

So by the time it was light we were a cold, tired, miserable family.

Well, E.G. and I anyway -- sozlet did in fact sleep pretty well throughout, got enough sleep, was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when she woke up. This was a huge relief because she's been sick a lot lately and had just barely gotten better -- the last thing I wanted was for her to get sick yet again.

She's seemed fine so far (knock on wood.)

Anyway, that's most of it... we broke down and went to a hotel last night and had Christmas morning there. We found out several hours after we checked in yesterday that the power was in fact back on, but knew from experience that it takes a looooong time for a big old house to warm up again (especially from ~40!), and we had to pay half the hotel bill regardless, so we decided to just stay there. It was actually really fun, and now we're just getting things in order, vaccuuming up firewood debris, that sort of thing.

Which I have to get back to.

Best wishes to Setanta and whomever else was affected by this storm.

And Merry Christmas!

Glad you're OK, Soz. Thank you for letting us know. Merry Christmas.

Really? Where do we live, Merry?

Soz
That's quite a story, I'm glad to hear everone is o.k.

It almost sounds like an episode from "The Waltons."

T'other side of the mountain, Gus. Sheesh. You don't know? No wonder you never come home.

<reads Soz's post>

Holy Moses!

I was wondering how you were, had not seen many recent posts, so when I saw your post on the other thread I clicked to see what else was new, and found this. What a story!

That sure sounds like a surreal - and very, very cold experience. It must have been so, eh, The Day After Tomorrow.

Later, distinctly later, you'll be recounting this story and it'll be the most exciting thing ...

Phew!

OK lemme read the rest of this thread

nimhwholivesinhollandwherethere'sneveranyhurricanes,blizzards,tornadoesornothinglikethat,justtheoddflood.

well we got snow today. yay was i happy nothign major only like 5 inches but its great to go to bed and see brown then wake and see pristine white

Ain't it, Seed?

I took lotsa pics, haven't had them developed yet, will post some if they turn out.

The ice is still there, four days on, and while there haven't yet been any more disasters we still have elm branches hanging very low, with disturbing curvatures, and we want the ice to melt already. (Interesting to see how different trees are affected, elms are what I've been calling "fractally" -- a branch splits into smaller branches and the split branches split and the splits split until you have a mass of small branches at the end of a major branch that get way too heavy when coated with ice. Bonier trees like the cottonwoods -- anyone remember how worried I've been about the cottonwoods throughout, and now this! -- aren't as affected. [The cottonwoods are, thankfully, fine. Whew.])

Have been checking weather and it looks like it will be in 30's and 40's within a couple of days. What's really weird though is that it looks like the temperature trend won't stop there -- predicted high of 62 in a week or so. Sixty-two???? I'm looking out the window now at deep-freeze wonderland, it's been below-zero even without windchill temps, and it's gonna be sixty-two???

If it could just melt a bit, and then we get a nice fresh layer of snow, that'd be great. 62, though, that's just brown and yucky. Grumble.

sozwholivesinignoranceofthephrase"therecanbetoomuchofagoodthing"

You've never seen snow if you haven't spent time in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. I've been to Colorado, Utah, Michigan, Canada, the northeast, there's nothing like the Sierra for sheer snowpack. California rules.

We are getting SNOW! 4-8 inches expected.

I took my daughter and her 2 friends sledding this afternoon, fun-fun-fun.

There are decent size hills all over the place where I live.

Our house is cozy and warm.

I love it when it snows, but, my neighbor has a strange way of clearing his driveway.

Glad you're safe, soz. Setanta's been wondering about you.
He's comparatively safe in the storm up here at hamburger's.
I wonder if he'll be able to find his Jeep in the long-term at the airport when he gets back I kinda hope those warm temps hit by then.

Even mild-weathered cape cod has been dumped upon. We didn't get the midwest's snow, we got the SE's snow. My parents have 2 trees down in their yard, a power pole has been knocked off-kilter (they've blocked the road), leaning over the street 2 doors down.

The Cape got it a lot worse than Boston proper this time, k. According to the local weather people, that is.

Struth, Merry Andrew. We got about 20 inches of wet snow and it's all still here. Unusual for the cape. The snow plow guy still hasn't made it here. I am hoping to get back to the city by lunchtime tomorrow.....