So much for a "mild" winter

[Bob Schroeck]

As I write this the first major snowstorm of the 2015-16 winter is bearing down on the Northeast, with our little corner of the Eastern Seaboard positioned to get a fair amount of action.  If the NWS is right, we could have upwards of a foot and a half by end of day tomorrow.
Ah, well, at least I bought snowboots this year.  Frozen toes from shoveling is what I've hated most about winter in the past ten years.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Foxboy]

Wicked cold up heah N'Hampshuh way.... Not so much snow, but damn cold all the same.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[DHBirr]

In Michigan -- or at least my southeasterly corner of it, between Detroit and A2 -- conditions are pretty much like what Foxboy described.  Things have certainly changed from my childhood, when drifts as much as five, six, or seven feet high weren't unexpected in a typical winter....  (I blame it on the shift to riding those newfangled mammoths instead of dinosaurs -- and that whole wacky fad of using this "fire" stuff.)
****
The Neanderthal Remnant -- We Shall Overcome!
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[hazard]

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, after a week or so of frost (6 degrees below 0 centigrade at night, -1 or so during the day) it's getting to a pleasantly balmy 6 to 10 degrees above. Looks like it's going to be a soft winter for what, the third year in a row by now?

Seriously, North America, stop stealing our cold weather.

[Pyeknu]

Just light snow in the Niagara peninsula started last night. I guess we're at the far port side of that storm. Makes things busy in the call centre today.

[robkelk]

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, after a week or so of frost (6 degrees below 0 centigrade at night, -1 or so during the day) it's getting to a pleasantly balmy 6 to 10 degrees above. Looks like it's going to be a soft winter for what, the third year in a row by now?

Seriously, North America, stop stealing our cold weather.

Hey, Yellowknife (62°26'32?N 114°23'51?W) is unseasonably warm at -14C to -17C (five to eight degrees C warmer than it "should" be)...

And last week it finally got cold enough here in Ottawa to start freezing the Rideau Canal.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Well. After sunset and the snow's still falling. It's a dry, powdery snow, easily picked up by the wind, which accounts for some seriously schizophrenic accumulations -- our car has almost no snow on it and barely an inch or two around the tires -- but ten feet away is a wall of snow four feet high that stretches halfway around the inner corner of our L-shaped house, blocking one garage door and the front porch before stretching on almost to the end of the bedroom wing. The temperature hasn't gotten out of the 20s F all day and it's going to dip into the teens tonight, which is good -- it'll keep that light powdery snow that way until I can get out tomorrow to move it all. And this is the kind of snow which is easily handled by my snowthrower (though I will have to do some serious digging just to get started).
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm on my way out the door to dig us out. I'll take a few pictures of the snow wall and if they come out decent I'll post'em here.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Dartz]

Fifteen degrees out.

In mid January.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Bob Schroeck]

15 C, I presume, Dartz, in which case argh.

I just got in a few minutes ago from the digging out. To save you the effort of looking up at the prior timestamp and doing the math in your heads, yes, that's 6.5 hours. I ducked inside once to warm up my toes, so call it 6 hours' labor to clear just the driveway and the walk to our porch from it. Local ordinance requires we dig out the sidewalks, but everyone in the neighborhood except for the two guys with gas-powered industrial-size snowblowers have said "Um, nope" to that this time around (even the cop who lives at the end of the street). The plow wall at the end of the driveway was five feet deep and close to eight feet thick -- and spilled thoroughly over the sidewalks.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[ordnance11]

Well. Good news and bad news. The good news I finally arrived at Falls Church, VA. The bad news is that I had to dig for 2 hours to park my car. I'm checking to see if the agency I'm to report to is open for business or not.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Ebony]

24 inches here in Morgantown, WV. I suspect that Valles got more, since he's south of me and up in the mountains. But we had clear skies and the high teens today, so unless there's more coming, we should be good.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[robkelk]

Well. Good news and bad news. The good news I finally arrived at Falls Church, VA. The bad news is that I had to dig for 2 hours to park my car. I'm checking to see if the agency I'm to report to is open for business or not.

If you have a contact telephone number or email address, leave a message letting them know you've arrived, giving your own local contact information, and asking what you should do. From what I'm hearing, I wouldn't be surprised if they tell you to wait a day or two before reporting in, but best to make sure.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

These first three were shot through two adjacent windows before I actually got outside, and show most of what things looked like right at the entrance of our house:



What I couldn't see from this angle is that there was a wind-built wall of snow just about as tall as the car stretching from the rear driver side fender off into the yard.
Okay, a shot of the garage entrance from the inside after I opened the door (and did a little shoveling):

The wall of snow here stretched all the way across the door.  Oh, and those windows are the ones the earlier shots were taken through.
Slightly higher angle, showing the wall right across the entrance of the house.  It was partly built by snow falling off the roof -- which happened at least twice that I know of during the middle of the storm yesterday.  At its highest point, that wall came up to about my shoulder.

And finally a shot down the driveway showing the extent of the wall.  I should have shot the other side of the car, but frankly, my fingers were freezing from operating my cell phone at that point.

Average accumulation in our yard is hard to determine, but the driveway ranged everywhere from about six inches near the car to a foot and a half or more closer to the street.  (And of course I gave the dimensions of the plow wall above.)  My snowthrower has trouble with more than a foot of snow, so sadly I only made use of it for about half the driveway and had to do the rest of it all by hand.
Oh, the white house across the street on the left?  Guy with gas-powered super-snow-blower.  He was done in less than two hours, complete with sidewalks.  Grrrrrrr.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[ordnance11]

robkelk wrote:

---

ordnance11 wrote:

---

Well. Good news and bad news. The good news I finally arrived at Falls Church, VA. The bad news is that I had to dig for 2 hours to park my car. I'm checking to see if the agency I'm to report to is open for business or not.

If you have a contact telephone number or email address, leave a message letting them know you've arrived, giving your own local contact information, and asking what you should do. From what I'm hearing, I wouldn't be surprised if they tell you to wait a day or two before reporting in, but best to make sure.

Been in touch with my new boss. He told me to download the OPM alert app. Right now we are on admin leave. I'll have to improve and widen the parking spot around my car tomorrow so at least I can maneuver in and out.

Edit1: Never thought I'd be grateful I bought snow boots last year. It seemed a waste of money then. Even better I packed it as part of my emergency gear and stowed it on the passenger's side.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Bob Schroeck]

Grrrrrr. I was going to go out today at lunch and dig out my sidewalks -- what with the melt-off over the past two days it was close to manageable, except for the mountains I'd piled on either side of the driveway.

But no, sometime this morning the town sent the plows through again to widen their narrow initial pass on Sunday to the full width of the street, and suddenly I had a) a new plow wall at the end of the driveway, and b) a new and deeper layer of snow boulders over most of the sidewalk. I just came in from digging out the end of the driveway, during which I surveyed the new obstruction. Hell with that. I'll pay the fine if I have to. I'm not throwing out my back twice in one week.

Today was my only real chance. Tonight it goes down below freezing for the first time since the storm, and all that wet snow is going to turn into a single block of sparkly ice.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[DHBirr]

And here in Michigan the temperatures have climbed into the upper 30s -- in fact, for much of yesterday they hovered right at 40; snow was falling yesterday evening, but never amounted to much....  In other words, the freakin' weather is yo-yoing all over the chart.  
I suspect I've mentioned it a minimum of once before here, but a Loserz cartoon back in '06 showed one of the girls wearing a tank top out on a balcony, enjoying the spring warmth -- until a gust of wind encased her in ice and she thought, "Oh yeah, Michigan."

-----
No, it ISN'T what it is!
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[Rajvik]

Bob, time to break out the power drill and the M-80s
 

[Black Aeronaut]

DHBirr wrote:

---

And here in Michigan the temperatures have climbed into the upper 30s -- in fact, for much of yesterday they hovered right at 40; snow was falling yesterday evening, but never amounted to much....  In other words, the freakin' weather is yo-yoing all over the chart.  
I suspect I've mentioned it a minimum of once before here, but a Loserz cartoon back in '06 showed one of the girls wearing a tank top out on a balcony, enjoying the spring warmth -- until a gust of wind encased her in ice and she thought, "Oh yeah, Michigan."

Dude, right now in Central Texas the temperatures are yo-yoing between mid-seventies and lower thirties.  Only instead of snowing, IT FUCKING DRIZZLES.
Dear God I wish it'd just snow.  Then I would be getting so goddamned soaked!

[Ebony]

Black Aeronaut wrote:

---

DHBirr wrote:

---

And here in Michigan the temperatures have climbed into the upper 30s -- in fact, for much of yesterday they hovered right at 40; snow was falling yesterday evening, but never amounted to much....  In other words, the freakin' weather is yo-yoing all over the chart.  
I suspect I've mentioned it a minimum of once before here, but a Loserz cartoon back in '06 showed one of the girls wearing a tank top out on a balcony, enjoying the spring warmth -- until a gust of wind encased her in ice and she thought, "Oh yeah, Michigan."

Dude, right now in Central Texas the temperatures are yo-yoing between mid-seventies and lower thirties.  Only instead of snowing, IT FUCKING DRIZZLES.
Dear God I wish it'd just snow.  Then I would be getting so goddamned soaked!

Son, you ain't gonna get snow. Texas only gets three days of snow a year, whether they want it or not. You're gonna get ICE.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[Black Aeronaut]

Ebony wrote:

---

Black Aeronaut wrote:

---

DHBirr wrote:

---

And here in Michigan the temperatures have climbed into the upper 30s -- in fact, for much of yesterday they hovered right at 40; snow was falling yesterday evening, but never amounted to much....  In other words, the freakin' weather is yo-yoing all over the chart.  
I suspect I've mentioned it a minimum of once before here, but a Loserz cartoon back in '06 showed one of the girls wearing a tank top out on a balcony, enjoying the spring warmth -- until a gust of wind encased her in ice and she thought, "Oh yeah, Michigan."

Dude, right now in Central Texas the temperatures are yo-yoing between mid-seventies and lower thirties.  Only instead of snowing, IT FUCKING DRIZZLES.
Dear God I wish it'd just snow.  Then I would be getting so goddamned soaked!

Son, you ain't gonna get snow. Texas only gets three days of snow a year, whether they want it or not. You're gonna get ICE.

Snow only happens in the Panhandle.  For ice, you want DFW, Waco, and maybe Austin.  Here in San Antonio, it just fucking rains.
Please don't forget how sprocking huge this place is.  Texas on its own is bigger than either Germany or France.  Here, this should help: http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-p ... nd-masses/

[Star Ranger4]

So, one could well say there is considerable (ahem) Latititude in the weather. *rimshot*
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[ordnance11]

Well, the good news, it's been in the 60's and then sun is out. The problem is that they still have huge snow piles in the parking lots and sidewalks. Who knows how long before it turns into a liquid state.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Bob Schroeck]

We're on a warming trend here now, too -- the current forecast is 60 degrees and 80% chance of a thunderstorm on Wednesday. I was wrong, we are having a mild winter.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Berk]

Can confirm Dallas and ice. The problem being, of course, since we don't get a lot of snow and ice, maybe only a couple of days of it a year, the city is not actually built to compensate for it.

So Dallas basically shuts down when ice accumulates.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead