snowed in for Presidents’ Day
We had planned to visit my family in Ontario this weekend, but with the three feet of snow we’ve gotten in the DC area this week, we postponed that trip until after the thaw. Which is good, because the weather they’re getting on the other side of the Lakes this week is likely to swoop down on us here by Monday. A friend told me that the federal government (in DC) closed for 11 days following the 1996 blizzard; since this one hit on a Friday, we’re only at 4.5 and counting. With the federal holiday on Monday, we probably won’t make 11 actual days of closure, although we’re at 7 calendar days already, making 11 is not out of reach there.
Despite the massive amounts of snow, we’ve been lucky on our block. Much of the town lost power with the first storm, but we never did. Having worked together on Friday to get our car, and six other cars on our block, off the street and into the driveways of friendly neighbors, we also had a well-plowed street, which made it easier to get out to clear driveways and fire hydrants. We did have a few limbs down on the block, from the oversized Bartlett pear trees and from the vulnerable hollies, but my partner worked with other neighbors to get those sawed through and moved out of the road. By Sunday morning the plows were able to clear both the road and the alley, so nobody had their car completely blocked in.
Things weren’t so lucky for the town as a whole, though. Two big trees came down onto power lines, blocking plow access and requiring intervention from professional arborists and the utility company. The town employees worked around the clock, went without power at Town Hall, and lost two plows. Knowing that they were working without heat, with little sleep, and with minimal food on Saturday, I cooked up double batches of lentil soup, spaghetti, and chocolate chip cookies for them to come and have at the house as they finished their shifts. In the end we gathered at a neighbor’s (who’d also supplied cornbread and brownies), but everyone chose to sleep or go home (or both) over eating. As a result, my partner and I ate spaghetti for several days and have a freezer full of lentil soup should we require it (the cookies were, of course, not difficult to get rid of).
As soon as we were all dug out from the first storm, we learned that we’d be getting another foot of snow on Tuesday night. There are a couple of people in town who rely on the bus service for groceries, and several neighbors with 4WD cars were generous enough to make sure that they were taken care of before the second storm struck. Not that there was much at the grocery store; on Monday afternoon there was still a selection, but by Tuesday morning there was very little of anything fresh on the shelves. None of the trucks had been able to make their deliveries on the rutted and ice-covered roads, and apparently the stores keep very little on site in warehouses these days. We have a pretty well-stocked pantry, but if this keeps up through the weekend we’re going to be down to the dregs. Hopefully we won’t have to be surviving on pickles!
Despite high winds, the second blizzard really wasn’t that bad. We got about another foot of snow, and the blowing snow filled in much of the spaces that had been cleared while creating drifts like I haven’t seen since I was a kid. While we didn’t lose power or tree limbs, we did lose one section of gutter and probably more before this is over. We needed just a couple more degrees of warmth or a few more hours of sun for the snow to come all the way off the roof earlier this week; as it was, it slid down and created huge overhanging snow-ice blocks over our dormers, leading people walking by in the street to stop and take photos. Today it’s windy, but clear and sunny. With a little luck, some of the snow will come off the roof and not take all the gutters with it.
Posted: February 11th, 2010 under local, nature.
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