February 08, 2011

Blizzard 2011

blizzard 2011 collage

The midwest got nailed with a blizzard on Feb. 1. Blizzard warnings are issued when winds reach 35 mph or more and visibility is reduced to 1/4 mile or less for an extended period of time – usually 3 hours or more. This was the first time ever a blizzard warning was issued for mid-MO.

I called in to work Tuesday morning….no way was I getting stranded in town while my girls were here. At that time we weren’t sure if Dan was going to have to try & get to work and I didn’t want the girls here alone (his company ended up cancelling, too). My company had already made arrangements to put us up in hotel rooms if need be so that at least some of us could make it to work the next morning. Unfortunately when you work for a newspaper there is no calling off for snow days!

It started snowing around 6:30 and didn’t stop until late that night (10 or so). Well, it didn’t really stop then…just slowed WAY down. It snowed so hard we could barely see across the street. We can usually see the girls’ school from our house (a couple streets over), but we couldn’t see it at all for a few hours. All-in-all we ended up with about 19”, with snow drifts over 4 FEET! There are STILL snow banks around town that are well over 6 feet tall, after piling up while they were clearing parking lots/roads. They are still bringing in dump trucks & front loaders to clear snow from street-side parking spaces & dumping it in the river.

We’ve had 3 more threats for snow since then, but luckily none have panned out except the 1st one that dumped another 3-4” on us. Unfortunately we’ve been dealing with some extremely cold temps (lows –5 and highs only in the low teens), so nothing is melting too quickly. We’re hoping for some decent weather this weekend (calling for highs in the mid-to-upper 40’s) so maybe….

I’m SO ready for spring!

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