Another day... another blizzard

Okay - I'm seriously done with this whole major snow storm thing.

We had a huge snowstorm right before Christmas and even though the storm happened on a Saturday the boys missed the last three days of school before the Christmas break. I really don't even remember how much snow we got in that one, but I remember thinking - wow this is a lot of snow for a MD snowstorm..... uh... yeah, not so much.

Then starting last Friday night and lasting through Saturday it snowed over 30 inches. 30 inches! I don't live in the mountains, or in the mid-west, or any other place where 30 inches of snow doesn't seem like the apocalypse. (In fact people around here are calling it the snowpocalypse or the snownami). As of Tuesday morning our neighborhood had yet to be visited by the county plows. Someone finally got a guy to come in here and help us out. It was absolutely wonderful that we got some help but the problem about him was that it was just a guy with a little pickup truck that has a stationary plow thingy on the front. For a normal MD snowstorm this would be perfect, but for this much snow - uh... this is not a good thing - it's just not nearly powerful enough. He did manage to create a single lane on each road and with cooperation people can get in and out of the neighborhood.

I finally got out and made it to work on Tuesday..... which was just in time for the blizzard. Seriously, are you kidding me? It started snowing on Tuesday afternoon and right now it's 8pm on Wednesday night and it's still snowing. We've had driving snow and intense wind all day long. My office closed for the first time in the 15 years I've been there. Baltimore City has declared it a 'Phase 3' emergency which means that except for official vehicles (fire, police, utilities) no cars are allowed on the roads - period. You will get a huge fine and possible jail time if you drive on a city road today.

Depending on where you are in MD you'll get between 10-30 additional inches on top of the roughly 30 inches from 3 days ago. That's right I said 3 days ago. Come on now, this is just silly. So we hadn't yet gotten plowed from the first storm and now we have these HUGE snow drifts - up to our windows (with snow inside the screens), our mailbox is all but covered, people have been shoveling throughout the day only to come back and find the wind erased all their hard work. Really imagine the wind blown snowdrifts that you've seen in your life and now put them on top of a base of 30 inches of snow that was already there and wet and heavy and not going anywhere. The State and County officials are begging people to stay off the roads for the next 48 hours at least.

I didn't mention that on Tuesday they canceled schools for the rest of the week. And while on some level I think this is ridiculous (the fact that they called the whole week so early) - the reality is - until a snowplow actually comes into our neighborhood there is no possibility of a bus actually making it through the neighborhood to pick them up so I guess it makes total sense. Frankly, while my office might be opened tomorrow I already know I'm not going to make it in. The only road into my neighborhood sits smack dab in the middle of a 2 mile long narrow, twisty, hill. A hill where I've encountered the worst driving conditions of my entire life - twice now. There is just no way it will be passable for my sedan or Brad's van tomorrow.... We'll have to wait and see what Friday brings.

Camela