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Showing posts with label blizzard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blizzard. Show all posts

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Snow Woes

Hey you asshat city plow drivers - thanks for burying the entrance to the alley under three feet of snow for the *8th* time. The only reason I'd ever own a dog would be so I could have it take a dump on your lawn.

Just dug out the alley entrance again. The side street to our north is damn impassable, but this yahoo insists on making pass after pass on the driveable street to our south.

While we were out in the alley LuLu konked me on the side of the head with a steel snow shovel. Full force, on a ridiculously comic backswing. Ouch.


Wednesday, February 2, 2011

A Heck of a Blizzard

 When u can no longer distinguish the sidewalk from the street and lawn, & the wind sounds like a Hollywood sound effects team has set up shop outside ur window . . . Well, then it looks like this blizzard will live up to the hype after all

6 ft drifts down the length of my alley, 6-8 foot deep hills the length of the side street to my south, and quite literally the largest snow drift I've ever seen on the side of my house. I doubt we'll get the van out on the road until Friday at the earliest.




Taking a break from my 2nd round of shoveling in the alley. Noting the wonderful grammar of local anchors who in the course of a few minutes said "props to the city" and "don't go nowhere".




Listening to Iron Butterfly and sad that In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidi doesn't hold up as well if you're not 17 and/or stoned.

Bay Viewers - if anyone digs out and is on the road this evening, I would welcome a quick lift to either Walgreens or the grocery store. Thanks!



My Thoughts Exactly LuLu! - Lisa





We finally got out of the alley at a little after nine, after spending hours clawing a path to freedom. That . . . was a lot of snow to shovel. The worst part? My phone, which was in my coat pocket for one of the many soaking-wet rounds of shoveling, was damaged. It still works as a phone, but all the perks that made my life happier - FB, txt, aps, email - are a no-go.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

A Blizzard is starting

snow drifts up to the middle of my calves in the alley this morning. Could be worse. Probably will be.

All malls closing @ 5

mps has announced they will close tomorrow. Let the Super Blow blizzard commence.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

The Return of Old Man Winter on Good Friday

God must truly follow the liturgical calendar, although he doesn't seem to like it too much. Ash Wednesday featured a nasty blizzard, and so did Good Friday.

Spring officially started the other day, but it felt like it'd been around for a week.

Temperatures in the 40 (F)'s had melted all the snow, every last bit of it. I went around without a jacket, the kids played outside (thereby ruining their clothes by covering them in mud) and all was well.

Then I had to go and think nostalgically on this ferocious winter, and hope for at least a few more flakes before it was all said and done.

Milwaukee, feel free to hang me from the nearest tree.

What my wish brought was 10.9 inches of snow in the city proper, bringing our total for the winter to 95.4 inches/7.95 FEET of the white stuff this season.

Hey, we got lucky - some parts of the area got more.

That puts us in second place all-time in Milwaukee's recorded history.

I'll say one thing for all this snow: I have now officially overcome my long-standing fear of driving in a snowstorm. Now, I could really care less. I don't like it, but I'm not afraid of it either.

However, I'd like to one day have a job where I could look outside, see a blizzard, sigh contently and say "You know, maybe I won't drive across town today. No doubt the office is going to close."

Instead, I went to work, which as I've said before gets awfully busy when the weather gets foul.

In the evening I set out to shovel and darn near slit my wrists. 10 inches, sminches - apparently my alley is the collection point for all drifting snow. I forced my gate open and was greeted by a wall of snow two feet high.

Sonofa***ch.

Naturally my snow blower still worked like crud, so I abandoned it and picked up a shovel. 20x20 parking slab - cleared. Back walkway, steps and porch - cleared. 1/2 of the alley behind our house - cleared.

And then I just gave up.

So as it stands my alley is impassable, Lisa's van, the only means of transporting the entire family at once, is therefore inoperable, and my back is killing me.

But I still can't say I mind all that much. It's been a memorable winter, that's for sure.

Monday, February 11, 2008

The Ash Wednesday Blizzard of 2008

Folks in Wisconsin don't get very rattled by winter. Sure, the news stations scratch and claw to see who can provide the most weather reports and the best fear-inspiring storm graphics, but I think  to Wisconsinites that's just a form of entertainment, like professional wrestling: no one here takes it seriously, but its fun to watch.

So the blizzard that hit last Wednesday didn't induce panic in the streets, but it sure packed enough oomph to make us pause.

Predictions going into Ash Wednesday were awful, with phrases like 'whiteout conditions', 'icy roads' and '17-20 inches of snow' batted about.

School was cancelled throughtout the city and anybody with common sense stayed home.

Naturally, that didn't include me, since I had to go to work at noon. I really, really, didn't want to leave the house but felt obligated A) because I'm the boss, and I couldn't expect other folks to show up if I wouldn't and B) I had an early afternoon meeting with a lawyer to oversee a deposition.

As you can imagine, once I got to work the lawyers cancelled and my second shift called in.

Not that I blame anyone; it was really turning into a whopper of a storm. This next pic hardly looks as if threatening weather was upon us, but trust me, it was just the eye of the storm.  

Pretty, isn't it? I thought so when I stopped the car to take the shot. But these next few are far more typical of the day:

Keep in mind each one of the preceding shots was taken before 2 p.m - the blizzard would continue until well into late evening, tapering off in prime-time.

In the middle of this

no-visibility

 ice-under-snow-covered roads

drifting and blowing snow

bitter strong wind

heavy wet snowfall

my wife called me and said she was going to take advantage of the snow day to pack up the kids and take them to Target to buy a pair of jeans for YaYa..

What???? Evidently she'd fallen into the comfortable 0pattern of discounting the weather predictions by 75%, which frankly is usually a safe bet. One look outside quickly discouraged her.

But about half an hour after hanging up jsonline.com broke a news story of a fatal van crash less than mile from our home, on a street we take often. Of course, it wasn't my family (thank God!) but for a moment there . .

Now one of the unique aspects of my business is that, much like funeral homes, we tend to benefit from other people's suffering. Big storms bring in big bucks, and Ash Wednesday was no exception. (we also tend to do well in great weather; it's the in-between where you have to fight and scrap for every dollar; go figure)

So, thrust temporarilly into the same job I held 9 years ago, and working alonside a brave replacement for my absent employee, we busted our humps throughout the long grueling evening.

The airport closed; more business. The local restaurants closed; more clients. By seven this was the situation: the city was shut down. No one was coming in, no one was going out, and no one was going to have any opportunity to eat, drink or be merry.

[Well, not quite true. We had a solid stock of alcohol, but it sold out quick]

During a lull I went to take some more pictures before darkness descended. Here's the depth ofthe snow as of, oh, 3:00 or 3:30. The numbers on the ruler are purely for decoration and don't dentote the actual depth - it's a foot long, minus whatchya see.

Note the ruler in my footprint.

As you know by now, this was a religious holiday, and one of some importance both to myself and my staff. With masses cancelled it was the first year in quite a long time where I didn't have the glory of having some descendant of the Reformation giggle and tell me I had dirt on my forehead.

More imporantly, we had to abstain from meat, and we had no fish on the premises. Thus we bravely sent out a young gentleman into the peak of the storm, to return shaken but not stirred, fish fry's in hand.

Suprisingly the ride home wasn't too bad, as I have the fortune of being able to take two major throughofares (sp?) to within blocks of my house. It was near my home that the fun began.

I ignored my wife's telephone warning and attempted to drive into our alley. I got no further than the entrance before I was hung up on drifts three or four feet deep. Once I got help and pushed my way free I parked blocks away in the only halfway decent spot, and walked home.

The alley was miserable, with snow drifts going up to my hips. And then, horror . .

The picture doesn't do it justice. The drift was three or four feet high and covered the majority of the 400 square foot parking slab we'd put in last year. Add to that the fact that if wehad any chance of escaping in the morning, I had to dig out a good chunk of the approach in the alley.

This was heavy, wet snow, a pure pain to move. Best of all? My snowblower was buried under a drift and I couldn't get it out without digging a path to the shed. So it was back to a good ol' fashioned snowshovel, yessir.

Suprisingly it went quickly. This didn't take finesse, it took brute strength, and of that I have plenty to spare. Still, thanks to Lisa the front had been shoveled once early in the day and a gracious neighbor had snowblowed the rest of the buildup, sparing me that chore.

We still were unable to get the van out the next day and Lisa wrote a very angry but articulate email to the Alderman complaining of Milwaukee's longstanding policy to leave alleys untouched (but under penalty of fines require homeowners to shovel out the garbage cans for city crews). The alderman not only wrote back but called me, gave me his cellphone number, and then called and left a message that was so long and chatty my machine cut out.

Huh. Guess it's an election year.

The next day I had to dig some cars out at work, and boy did my muscles feel it. By then the snow had melted just enough to give it some extra weight, making it just that much harder to clear out.

Oh, one cool thing: on the way home from work one dayI stopped and took photos of the biggest snowman I'd ever seen. Keep in mind this was taken a few days after the snowfall and it had already partially melted and shrunk. Note the pedestrians relative size to the snowman.

 

The total snowfall?17 or 18" I believe, with drifts of much deeper depth. Other areas of Southeastern Wisconsin got hit much harder. That snowfall put us over the five foot mark for the year; last year at this time we had experienced just over TWO feet.

Tonight's forecast, following two days of temperatures of  -5 F and windchill temps of negative 35F?

Three to seven more inches of snow.