February 16, 2015

Snowmageddon '15

Having just driven a distance of 5 miles in a bit under an hour and a half, I think that this young lady sums up the opinion of many of my fellow Virginians...


"OH GOD! WE'RE GONNA HAFTA TO EAT OUR OWN LEGS AREN'T WE?"

It's been coming down remarkably hard for several hours now. Predictions are for 6-12 inches of snow, which is quite a bit for us. There has been some flickering and intermittent outages, so power may not persist. 

In other news, the plumbing situation deteriorated rapidly Saturday night with the result that both bathrooms were unusable so we sent Mom to my sister's house before finally breaking down and calling a plumber. In a few moments I will get the first shower, I've had in over two days. Yay!
Mom is still in North Carolina suffering the dreadful indignity of having to watch her three year old granddaughter play in the snow. 

UPDATE: I have not as of yet had to eat my own leg...but it has been a rear run thing. 

I left for work around 11:30 PM deciding that it was prudent to be on the other side of the bridge tunnel as soon as possible.  The interstate was as bad as I've ever seen it, being pretty much a sheet of ice. stopped at my friend's comic book store (normally a 15-20 minute drive) at 12:30 having narrowly missed a swim in the James river. 
Work called and start time was delayed until 6AM so BOB!1! and I talked till late in the night and I went to the car at 5:15. It had become a carsicle in the intervening hours with an eighth of an inch of ice that had to be removed (at that point the snow was being assisted by sleet and freezing rain) At 5:50 I called work to tell them I was running late as I had taken over 40 minutes getting into the carsicle and extricating myself from the alley...only to stick fast in the side street, where the car overheated and became engulfed in its own steam. After a cool down period and replenishing the radiator fluid and confirming that the cooling system did not have a leak beyond the safety valve, I finally cleared the snow from the grill and after a sad demonstration of the sort of insane and pathetic car-flailing that confuses and amuses Northerners no end made it out of the side street and decided that snow chains are something that I REALLY need to own. 
  By this time the office had told me not to come in as as there was simply not enough work and I began the ride home. At that point I discovered that the sleet was coming so hard that the windshield wipers could not keep up, so I had to periodically pull over to scrape my windshield. I abandoned my car in front of a neighbors house 6 houses down as the road is basically impassable by a rear wheel drive sedan at this point. I got in at 8:30 AM. 
   As I type this it is still coming down. Parts south of here are suffering a spectacular ice storm and there are reports of power outages, though we have seen no further flickering here. We have roughly 6 inches of snow generously seasoned with ice as I type this.   

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:33 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 566 words, total size 4 kb.

1 Good luck on your weather and plumbing issues.  The power flickered up here in Manassas a few hours before the snow started, but has been steady since then.  Our forecast accumulation has been dropping slowly from its high of 12 inches all day, and currently sits at 3-5 inches total.

Posted by: Siergen at Mon Feb 16 20:27:13 2015 (ohSuC)

2 4-6 (unplowed, I assume) inches of snow and ice is more than enough for me to say "Nope, I'll wait for the plow" even up here in Boston, so I have sympathy.  Luckily, I had previously taken the day off so I could clear the 3 feet (somehow) of snow from my deck and dig my car out in peace.

Posted by: ReallyBored at Tue Feb 17 10:28:41 2015 (ulGxe)

3 We got an inch! Woohoo!

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Feb 17 16:36:52 2015 (ZJVQ5)

4 Albeit we had a lot of insanely blowing snow on Saturday, and I misjudged my Saturday enough to have been waiting for a bus in it. Luckily, I was able to adjourn to a heated indoor area when it was really bad, and then my brother kindly volunteered to pick me up from the mall bus stop so I didn't have to walk home from the "slightly closer to my place, but still thirty minutes walk away" bus stop.

But overall snowfall was about an inch and a half. It just blew around a lot.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Feb 17 18:14:58 2015 (ZJVQ5)

5 So, yeah, here in Sydney it can get awfully hot, and sometimes everything catches fire, but at least we don't have this frozen water falling from the sky nonsense.


Except hail.  Hail we got.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Feb 17 18:53:25 2015 (2yngH)

6 One of only nice things about being in a post-employment situation is that if you plan ahead, you don't have to go out in  cruddy weather.

We've had a couple of good storms this winter here in Duckford, and two friggin' cold snaps, but I've been able to avoid actually leaving Pond Central during them entirely.

Still, we've been pretty much looking at the East Coast's winter weather with a combination of pride and fear.  Pride in that, if it occurred, we'd be able to deal with it, and fear that we might have to.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Wed Feb 18 03:58:23 2015 (jGQR+)

7 While here in the PNW, it's been unseasonably warm. Not that I mind. I have some lovely Rhododendrons in the front that have the annoying habit of blooming in February, and then instantly getting killed in a frost.  Right now they're in full bloom, a rarity.

I should take pictures.

Posted by: Mauser at Wed Feb 18 04:39:31 2015 (TJ7ih)

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