Snowmageddon Survival

Snowmageddon?  Yes.  Snowmageddon.  That's just one of the names given to last week's storm.  I've also heard Snowpocalypse and Snowapalooza.  Being stuck in a blizzard makes you silly, I guess.   And stuck is exactly what we were.  Once I got home on Tuesday afternoon, that was it for a while.  We got around 12 inches of snow - not as much as the forecast had predicted, but enough to bring life screeching to a halt here in Central Illinois. 

When I left work on Tuesday, there was level 2 emergency in place in our county, and soon after I got home, that was changed to a level 3.  A level 3 means all county roads are to be considered closed.  Shortly after that, the state police closed the highways.  The National Guard was stationed at the on/off ramps to turn people away.  It was crazy! 

I know lots and lots of people who lost power, and some were without it for more than a day.  Thankfully, nobody suffered any collateral damage as a result.   We never lost power here.  When I went to bed on Tuesday night, listening to the tiny little pellets of ice as they continued to hit the windows, I figured we'd just wake up half frozen in the middle of the dark night if the power did go out, and we'd have to stumble around until we found our flashlights.  We were ready for it, if it did go out - we had the sleeping bags lined up, the gas heater out, emergency bags packed, and hand warmers, hats, gloves, and scarves waiting for us.  But we made it through the storm with the power on. 

I stayed home on Wednesday.  My office opened, though I'm not sure how they could really do that, since the state and county roads were still all under that level 3 emergency, but they did.  I don't think many folks made the trek, but I guess enough made it to keep business going.

I couldn't have made it there if I'd tried.  Drifts were everywhere. 

At least not until well after noon.  Alot of that snow whirled around and landed right in front of our garage door.  It was like the snow was trying to hide from the wind.  We had 3 feet of snow along half the length of our driveway, and then it tapered down to about a foot by the end .  Of course, after that, there was a massive chunk of snow deposited by the snow plow to also dig through.   Thank God for snow blowers is all I can say.  Whoever invented those was a genius!

By the end of the day on Wednesday, we were pretty much all 110% bored.  I was never so happy to go to work on Thursday.  The kids were still out of school, though, and had to suffer through another snowbound day.  There's only so much TV watching, video gaming, snowman building, and just plain laying around that you can do!  Everybody was mostly happy to get out of the house and back to school on Friday, even if they did have to trudge through some snow to get to the bus stop.

And now, well...  Now it's snowing again.   I suppose maybe it IS snowmageddon.