Blizzard 2011

This was it....The Storm.  The one that you see coming and prepare for, yet wonder if it will just fizzle out like other big predicted storms have.  It surly lived up to it's prediction and then some.  Our first real blizzard, which ended up being a historic one.  We sat last night as a family on the couch bundled up in blankets with all of the lights off gazing out of the windows and listening to the whipping 60mph winds.  If you have lived in a snowy area before, you know the snow globe effect...large white thick puffs coming down and everything looking like a fairy tale?  Now, you know how it looks if you shake up a snow globe really hard and it just looks a blur?  Last night, we were awed by that blur.  Blowing and heavy thunder snow that made it look like it was so foggy outside you couldn't see far beyond the porch.   It made for a wonderful family evening, curled up together in the quite, simply reveling in the event.

In the pre-dawn hours as I went to let the dogs out and couldn't get the front door open, I slowly realized that around our whole house was a giant drift and that the driveway was at least thigh high in snow.  I called the skeleton staff that we'd planned on coming in to work this morning and told them to forget it until at least mid day.  There was no worry there, none of them could get out either!  We began to dig out and realized the road out front, which is a state highway,  hadn't been plowed at all. The fact was, no matter how much we got done, getting to work was not going to be in the cards for us.  Today turned into a dig out family snow day following a record breaking blizzard.  Our little town received more snow even than Chicago (or at least that's what our weather people are saying).  We had 23.6 inches over night, and that was on top of the 5 inches we got the night before!


Now the digging is done for the day and kids are playing like they have never seen snow before.  They will have warm cookies and fresh bread waiting for them when they come in.  Now,  I am just going to sit for a while and take in the world around me, in awe of ole man winter.