Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Snow Day
Hello and here is today's weather report from Tuscarora Weather Station #48:
As you know, we've been having an unseasonably warm winter and it only finally got really cold (-40) for a couple of days last week. This week has been warm (0 to -10) and clear until this morning... The weather forecast on the tea-time news said "a few mild flurries overnight", but when the snow came it turned out to be a wee bit more than that:
Our garage door has been malfunctioning, and as we were getting it fixed today (it needed a new big spring), the Jeep was on the outside when the snow came:
There was traffic chaos all over the city, with radio warnings of a "Heavy Snowfall Warning" and reports of accidents all over. Locals were on CBC radio saying they hadn't seen snow like this in February in living memory! The traffic was awful - people were taking 2 hours to make journeys which would normally take 20 minutes! There was a "tow-ban" on the Transcanada highway - i.e. the RCMP weren't letting tow-trucks go and pull cars out of the ditch in case the tow-trucks ended up in the ditch too! So they were telling people to stay with their cars and be patient! Calgary is well known among Canadian cities for not bothering with silly things like snowploughs or gritters - in Edmonton, they say that the offical policy of the Calgary Roads Service when it snows is to put the kettle on and wait for the next Chinook!
We weren't too bad, as we had nowhere vital to be for the start of the morning, so we decided to wait a wee while until the worst was over. P was initially considering going on public transport, but she came back again after waiting for 20 minutes in the snow with no sign of the bus! We ended up having breakfast at home and then she braved the roads in the Honda and made it to work for about 10 o'clock. I was doing Masters work at home and was waiting in for the Garage Door Doctor, so I was at home when it really started to snow...
I brought the Jeep back indoors after trying to get some of the snow off it, with limited success:
I did manage to get a lot of the snow off, but a lot of it did seem to end up on me!
I did take a trot across the road to the postbox when the snow was coming down at its heaviest, and I found couldn't see the house from 30 feet away! And when I got back to the house, I couldn't see the end of the street anymore - you can see how people can lose their bearings in a blizzard!
A lot of the cars in the street were more or less buried in the snow:
You can see how much was coming down by looking at how much snow ended up on our deck rail:
In all, we got somewhere between 10 and 15cm of snow today. This morning they were estimating 2-4cm, but we think they looked out the window and revised the forecast accordingly! I ended up shovelling the drive and the street twice - the first time it was easy, just a light dusting of our usual 'icing sugar' snow, and I cleared the drive and also the sidewalk all the way up to the end of the street (up to the bus stop, if you know where that is!). Then it just kept on snowing and all my good work was undone, and I had to shovel again. This time there was much more snow and it was a good bit heavier, so I just did the drive and our own sidewalk before I got a hernia!
We went for a walk later just to see how deep the snow was:
Up to my knees in a snowdrift (I have snow-boots on, but you can't see them!)
P also took some nice pics of snowy trees:
The weather forecast is for more snow tomorrow and Friday, and more freezing temps at the weekend. Looks like we're going to get some "cold + snow" for a few more days. It's like Canada is trying to show us what it's really going to be like if we do decide to stay on!
Love from the snowy North
J&P
As you know, we've been having an unseasonably warm winter and it only finally got really cold (-40) for a couple of days last week. This week has been warm (0 to -10) and clear until this morning... The weather forecast on the tea-time news said "a few mild flurries overnight", but when the snow came it turned out to be a wee bit more than that:
Our garage door has been malfunctioning, and as we were getting it fixed today (it needed a new big spring), the Jeep was on the outside when the snow came:
There was traffic chaos all over the city, with radio warnings of a "Heavy Snowfall Warning" and reports of accidents all over. Locals were on CBC radio saying they hadn't seen snow like this in February in living memory! The traffic was awful - people were taking 2 hours to make journeys which would normally take 20 minutes! There was a "tow-ban" on the Transcanada highway - i.e. the RCMP weren't letting tow-trucks go and pull cars out of the ditch in case the tow-trucks ended up in the ditch too! So they were telling people to stay with their cars and be patient! Calgary is well known among Canadian cities for not bothering with silly things like snowploughs or gritters - in Edmonton, they say that the offical policy of the Calgary Roads Service when it snows is to put the kettle on and wait for the next Chinook!
We weren't too bad, as we had nowhere vital to be for the start of the morning, so we decided to wait a wee while until the worst was over. P was initially considering going on public transport, but she came back again after waiting for 20 minutes in the snow with no sign of the bus! We ended up having breakfast at home and then she braved the roads in the Honda and made it to work for about 10 o'clock. I was doing Masters work at home and was waiting in for the Garage Door Doctor, so I was at home when it really started to snow...
I brought the Jeep back indoors after trying to get some of the snow off it, with limited success:
I did manage to get a lot of the snow off, but a lot of it did seem to end up on me!
I did take a trot across the road to the postbox when the snow was coming down at its heaviest, and I found couldn't see the house from 30 feet away! And when I got back to the house, I couldn't see the end of the street anymore - you can see how people can lose their bearings in a blizzard!
A lot of the cars in the street were more or less buried in the snow:
You can see how much was coming down by looking at how much snow ended up on our deck rail:
In all, we got somewhere between 10 and 15cm of snow today. This morning they were estimating 2-4cm, but we think they looked out the window and revised the forecast accordingly! I ended up shovelling the drive and the street twice - the first time it was easy, just a light dusting of our usual 'icing sugar' snow, and I cleared the drive and also the sidewalk all the way up to the end of the street (up to the bus stop, if you know where that is!). Then it just kept on snowing and all my good work was undone, and I had to shovel again. This time there was much more snow and it was a good bit heavier, so I just did the drive and our own sidewalk before I got a hernia!
We went for a walk later just to see how deep the snow was:
Up to my knees in a snowdrift (I have snow-boots on, but you can't see them!)
P also took some nice pics of snowy trees:
The weather forecast is for more snow tomorrow and Friday, and more freezing temps at the weekend. Looks like we're going to get some "cold + snow" for a few more days. It's like Canada is trying to show us what it's really going to be like if we do decide to stay on!
Love from the snowy North
J&P
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