"Snowmageddon" Is What the Press Call It ...

[chomiji]

I disagree with the name - I don't think we're in a battle, really, because it's not a contest - Mother Nature has us all whipped without trying.

The Mr. has gone back out to shovel some more. I did a stint earlier - it was about halfway up my thighs ... .

Our house, with the walk and steps shoveled, as well as a little path to the semi-cleared street (where I was standing)

Looking down the side street, around the corner. Note the amount of snow clinging to the branches and power lines.

There are a few more pix here.

Comments

[hikari-mibu.livejournal.com]

O.O Wow! And I thought we had it bad.

[chomiji]

It's been kind of an amazing winter for snow! And it's barely half over ... .

[hikari-mibu.livejournal.com]

Barely half over...makes me wish I was there. Glasgow's snow was, in the face of your snow, pathetic.

[scribblemoose]

Wow, that's a lot of snow! Hope you keep warm.

(Your house looks really pretty, by the way. ^^)

[chomiji]

Awww, thanks. Yes, it has a lot of character, but tends to be fearfully messy on the inside. There's actually a whole other wing out the back, so it's bigger than it looks.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

We didn't get as much snow from this storm, mainly because we got a few hours of sleet in the middle. It looks like your area was just enough colder that it all came down as snow.

[chomiji]

Some of the stuff in the afternoon on Friday was sleety, but by dark, it was all snow. We found a slush layer at the bottom when we were shoveling.

[jinxaire.livejournal.com]

I am so grateful it doesn't snow where I live. O.O

[chomiji]

It can be pretty messy!

[7veilsphaedra.livejournal.com]

Where do you live? Because that looks pretty normal to me.

[chomiji]

Takoma Park, MD, which is just outside of Washington, DC (I can walk to the border in about 12 minutes). And this is a vastly unusual amount of snow for us. A mere 3 to 6 inches will pretty much turn Washington upside down. See snowstorm records here.

So where do you live, that this is a normal amount of snow?

[7veilsphaedra.livejournal.com]

I just moved from British Columbia, and by this time of year, the snow would be ploughed into drifts that were about 5 meters high along the sides of the roads.

I'm in Calgary, Alberta, now, and there's less, but the scene outside your window wouldn't raise too many eyebrows here. Of course, if that is from one night's accumulation, as opposed to since the end of November, then it would be considered a horrendous freak storm.

[chomiji]

Well, that is 95% or more from one snowfall, starting about 1:00 p.m. yesterday. Shady areas still had an inch or so from the previous snowfall.

Part of the problem with snow in this area is that in many winters, there won't be more than a foot of snow total, for the whole winter. So it doesn't pay for towns and counties to keep all that much in the way of snow removal equipment - it's a waste of money most years. But then we get a year like this - we had a 15-inch snowfall in December, too - and the place gets paralyzed because the roads can't be cleared out for several days because of the lack of equipment.

[7veilsphaedra.livejournal.com]

In Calgary, I'm told, we get one year in about 5 or 6 when the snow hits like that, and the roads develop terrible ice-ruts (this year being a prime example) because the snow isn't removed quickly enough. So the city decides to raise property taxes and budget for snow removal. After about 2 years of warm winters, when the snowfall isn't so drastic or it melts quickly, the city then decides to shunt snow removal back into general revenues, where it goes for ... something not snow related. Of course, the bad winter invariably hits again in time, and the pattern repeats. It's as though a bad snow year is always an excuse to raise property taxes.

But all that snow in one storm is a horrendous burden. It looks like your home is built on a bit of a rise, however, so you won't get so much flooding if a really warm spell suddenly hits.

That slushy stuff is nasty if there's ice underlying it.

[lawless523.livejournal.com]

Ooh, a Dutch colonial! We used to own one too. The only bad part was that icicles would fall down suddenly and startle cats. It happened once when one of them was draped over my shoulders. He made a fast and painful (for me, anyway) getaway.

Good luck with the shoveling, and stay warm!

[chomiji]

Thanks!

Yes, Dutch Colonial Revival. The part of the house you can see in the picture dates from 1926. There's a huge wing out the back that the original owners added in the 1940s, which added another 60% to the interior space. The house looks little and cute from this vantage, but from the side street (we're on a corner), it looks huge, because the ground drops away sharply on that side, making the basement daylight on most of three sides, and so the house is essentially three stories.

We haven't got any icicles yet, but we walked to a friend's for supper, and on the way we passed a house with a truly impressive set fringing their porch.

[snarp]

We had a kid from down the street come and say he'd shovel the drive for $50. He's been at it about an hour now, and is about to have an enforced cocoa break.

[chomiji]

It's a lot of snow, and the bottom layer is slushy, so it weighs a ton. I'm glad you forced your shoveler to have cocoa!

[jedishampoo.livejournal.com]

Wow! And I was just bitching about the rain we've had the last two days. (Well, I live in the desert!)

Stay safe, and warm!

[chomiji]

Aww, thanks! The funny thing is, it's not that cold. It was barely below freezing most of the day, though the temperature dropped after the sun went down.

[eldanis.livejournal.com]

WOOOW. I've been complaining at the cold all winter, and we've gotten some snow here (1.5 feet about a month ago and then a little more from this system), which is a lot for NC, but you have us beat, no contest. Do you think there is danger of weather complicating Katsucon next weekend?

[chomiji]

Yes, we had almost as much as you did in December. It's been an impressive winter for snow, already!

I don't expect there to be much of a problem by next weekend, although they're calling for a little more snow Tuesday night.

[nouvellebrielle.livejournal.com]

O_O Stay warm, dear! All the best with the shovelling, and take care!

[chomiji]

Awww, thanks! It's not all that cold, really, although the temperature dropped some once the sun went down.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

You guys have so much more snow that we have here in Vermont!

[chomiji]

Freaky, right? We really do get some strange weather in Washington. It seems dead wrong for a place that can get up to 100°F in the summer to have this much snow in the winter.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Oh, we can get up to 100 degrees too-- just not for many days in a row!

[theloomofmoira.livejournal.com]

That's just crazy snow.

[chomiji]

It is very crazy snow! (How are you doing?)

[theloomofmoira.livejournal.com]

Crazy, sans snow. Feel like I just came through one hell of a storm, but it's over, and now I feel really, really good. Also, as of TODAY, I have working internet at the house again! It's been over a month.

[estara.livejournal.com]

Amazing amount of snow alright, for this German.

However I will never understand how some countries - unless they are earthquake prone - have their power and telephone lines hanging on poles still. We've gone away from that since the 60s and nowadays it's all underground (powerlines, telephone lines, internet lines, tv cable - all except cell phone transmitting poles), so the only time a winter blizzard can snap powerlines is if they crash the big cross country power-transferring poles (which actually happened in 2005 up in the north).

[chomiji]

I'll have to ask the Mr. about the power lines - why we still have them that way. It's quite common across the nation. It can certainly get very dangerous, especially in an area with a lot of old trees, like ours.

[estara.livejournal.com]

If he has any idea why, I'd be really interested in an answer to that. I've wondered about it whenever I see bad weather shown on tv in the US... much like I wonder why some parts of the UK have their plumbing running outside the outer walls, which means they can freeze up in bad winters...

[felicitoussk8er.livejournal.com]

It looks exactly like Spokane -- LAST winter, when we set an all-time record for our area. One December day saw an inch an hour, for hours. I was in NYC that day but my husband said he had never seen anything like it -- and we are climbers & skiers. The city had to contract with people to make "snow dumps" on vacant acreage, where dump trucks could offload the plowed-up berms that took over city streets. Approx. 50 businesses had roof collapse, because massive storm followed massive storm.


We've has almost no snow this winter. Just rain. Very, very strange. The shiny new red snow blower Steve insisted we had to have because his back couldn't take another winter like last years? Sitting in the garage. Its been fired up exactly *once* this winter, for a whopping 2 inches.

I love your pics! Burrow in & read, read, read!

[chomiji]

Yes, we definitely had that inch-an-hour thing going on! We ended up paying to have some of ours dug out today - the Mr. had just about had it when several young guys who work for a local house-painting company came by with shovels, so he paid them to dig out the cars. There's now a pile of snow about head high on our lawn, where they dumped it all.

I just finished a re-read of something I needed for a fanfic challenge I'm doing! And I walked up to the Co-op (which was open, but almost entirely out of bread) to fill out the fridge a bit. And then I made hot biscuits and homemade chicken-veg soup for supper.