The Future Is White (Temporarily)

It would have been nice to find my snow boots, in a convenient place in the garage, say. Easy to get to. I’m not sure I would have ventured out much, but it’s not fun in the snow wearing sneakers. Snow that’s deep.

I’m not sure how deep. It snowed all day yesterday. All. Day. Not those big fat flakes people were seeing further south, either, as temps warmed up more down there. Just little snow, hard to see unless you step outside, but lots of it and steady.

So I can’t give numbers. We got 8 inches on February 3rd-4th. I guess I’d call it 15 additional inches, although some of the original 8 inches melted at some point and I just don’t know. There may be 2 feet of snow out there, maybe a lot less.

Whatever happened here, or is still happening, hasn’t happened before in anyone’s memory. We’ve got pretty decent records, certainly back a century and further. There have been snowier Februaries, cumulatively, but no one remembers that. This is what people will remember.

And big picture? If you’re going to have significant weather, this is the kind I prefer. No hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes or tsunamis, please. I’m sure there’s been suffering out there, from power outages to missed flights to car accidents, to at least one death I’m aware of (surely there are more). Bad weather is bad.

But this was just a lot of snow in, yes, an area never going to be prepared for it because it almost never happens, and there’s nothing we can do about the hills. Crews have been out 24/7, sanding and plowing and generally getting the main roads in good, drivable shape. No one can get out of their driveway, that’s the problem.

It’s 32 degrees currently, so we’re about to head into wintry mix land, although maybe not up here. It’ll start getting slushy later for most of the area, but the week is still marginal and there’ll be a lot of that mixing before we get back to normal (the normal temperature for this time of year is 50 degrees F.).

This was never going to drastically change my life. I’ve always worked at home. I’ve been through a lot of heavy snows in 30 years. It rarely affected my ability to work, as long as we had power, and nothing has changed in that regard. I’m not sure how much time I’ve spent outside in the past 10 days. Less than an hour, I think. That’s the unusual part.

My wife, on the other hand, has had her life upended. She taught a class last Wednesday, then a couple on Thursday. Friday she normally does make-up stuff but all she had on the schedule was a hair appointment. I mentioned then that she might come home from that and not leave for a week. I was pretty close.

So, school canceled on Monday and Tuesday, partial days on Wednesday and Thursday, then maybe classes will open tomorrow again. Church was closed on Sunday, and there was no choir rehearsal last Wednesday. She’s had a bizarre break; I’m grateful for it and for her, but I think she’d prefer some normalcy by now. Soon enough, I guess.