My Mom sends me emails of "oral history", stories from our family, usually events long before I was born, occasionally things within my lifetime. Here's an excerpt of what she wrote today:
Oral History in the making...
Believe anything you hear about our blizzard. We're closing in on 16" of fresh snow and the winds are virtually "blizzard" qualified, even if not literally so. The airport runways were all closed down for the first time since the Halloween snowstorm of 1991. Mall of America is closing early. The U of M is closed. Those three places rarely close, so that's a measure of conditions, here. The buses were pulled off the roads early afternoon, after 1/3 of them got stuck. Downtown Mpls. has 10-ft drifts from the blowing snow. The Holidazzle Light Parade downtown was cancelled for only the 10th time in 19 yrs.
And from MnDOT:
Mn/DOT is advising no travel in the Twin Cities metropolitan area due to difficult road conditions.
That's significant, because this is Minnesota - we know how to deal with snow. When MOA closes, public transit shuts down, and MnDOT says stay off the roads, you know it's serious.
I spent over an hour and a half this morning shoveling. Usually I skip my driveway, knowing I can just drive over the snow. Today not so much - with a solid foot of snow, there's no way my car would make it through that. And of course I haven't had my snowblower tuned up for a couple years, so it didn't start. This necessitated hauling / throwing a lot of snow by shovel. My arms and shoulders hurt afterward.
And then it kept snowing all day, so by evening I needed to do everything all over again. My sidewalks acted as if I'd never touched them in the first place - all that time spent earlier in the day seemed for nought. (I'm sure tonight would have been loads worse had I not shoveled earlier, but it sure didn't feel like it) My neighbors were out shoveling, as well. We talked briefly, then spent another hour shoveling out their van from the driveway.
Some photos from the day:
Backyard
Front yard, facing neighbors
MSP Flights Cancelled; Photo from Bruce Bisping, startribune.com
1 comment:
First of all, THANK YOU so much for making me feel old. I was a freshman in college for the Halloween Blizzard of '91. It was supposed to be my first weekend home since I started classes, and obviously that didn't happen. I remember heading home the following weekend instead, and just being amazed at the height of the drifts, and the icicles still hanging off of the power lines.
I shoveled off my sidewalk before I came in to work this afternoon. Had at least 16" high drifts--we'll see if I'm ambitious enough to shovel again when I get home tonight!!
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