Snowed in

Tuesday morning I got up to shovel us out so I could go get Ben and then head to work.myself.

Wasn't happening.  After an hour or so, I cleared the driveway enough to back out to the road.  I hoped I could get to the ruts in the snow where some SUVs & trucks had driven past ... but even in that I got stuck.  I managed to unstuck myself in only about 15 mins, then took another hour or so to finish the driveway.

Helped dig out neighbors, helped unstuck some of their vehicles.

About 10:00 Ben called to say a coworker's parent could get out of his drive and had offered to drop off stranded lifeguards at their homes.  About 10:45 the plow finally cleard our street.  Ben was dropped off about 10 minutes later while I was clearing the skred from the bottom of our driveway.

After helping a couple neighbors again I finally got back in the house just past noon.

Man, I am still sore.

Snow!

Ben needed to be picked up from work about 9:30ish tonight.  It's been snowing pretty fiercely all afternoon, so I figured I'd give myself a few extra minutes to drive slowly and left about 9:10.

I promptly got stuck at the top of our driveway.  And by "at the top", I mean 2 feet out of the garage.  But you know, especially on pristine new snow, it's deceptive how much drifting happens at the top of the driveway.  I cleared that away and sure enough, it was at least 12 inches deep there and less deep as you went further down the driveway.

So I got the car backing down the driveway ... and got stuck at the bottom of the drive.  I mean good and stuck.  Hit the snow on the road and slid right  into the curb in front of our mailbox.

As I was digging that out, Ben called from Tundra Lodge to let us know the hotel was putting up employees for the night because the roads are unfit to drive on.

Queue one of our neighbors getting stuck in the snow driving up the street.  Her brothers came out to help her get her car in the drive, then they came over and helped me.  By now Becky had come out to help clear our drive and dig our car out.  With the neighbors help we got the car half way up the drive.  I only stopped at 1/2 way up because snow had piled up on the rear window and, as I was backing in, I couldn't see where I was going.  Cleared things off, got back in the car, slid back to the bottom of the drive.

Ugh.  More clearing, got the car turned around, drove it forward this time and got it back in.  One hour in our driveway.  Ugh.

I'm really glad Tundra Lodge is putting Ben up overnight. I don't think I could have gotten across town to pick him up.

Mixed Opinions on Snow

I was kind of hoping to catch some of the lunar eclipse last night. I had thought maybe I could since I was scheduled to get off work right about the time the eclipse was supposed to start. It was snowing in Green Bay, though. Which in turn meant I was delivering pizza in the snow again. At least for the last hour or two.

However, the snow was so beautiful, I really couldn't bring myself to be disappointed. Huge, fluffy, slow falling flakes. Standing outside felt just like watching a snow globe. From the inside. There was almost no wind, almost no one outside. Just gentle, peaceful snow drifing down through the street lights.

And of course, when it snows, the temperature warms up. Something to do with cloud cover trapping in heat, if I understand correctly. Kind of like a local quilt in the sky. I mean, it wasn't actually warm, but the temperature rose from right around zero degrees to the mid 20s. Which felt very nice.

Then this morning while I shovelled the driveway, Tabby played in the snow. She had a great time throwing snow onto where I had just scraped it off. And making a snowman. It was difficult convincing her to come inside. But after a good cry about it we shared some hot cocoa, looked at pictures of her playing in the snow and she's happy again.

Floods

I was scheduled to work at 5pm yesterday. So at about 4:58 I pulled up to the corner of Main and Mason, about 1/4 mile up from Pizza Hut, and traffic was backed up from that light all the way to the next light up on Mason. Gah. But I happened to be about middle of the pack, right next to the Walgreen's parking lot at the corner. So I quickly turned in the Mason Street entrance, cut through and noticed as I pulled out the Main Street entrance that traffic was backed up because of a police barricade blocking Main Street. Oops, I looked down the road towards Pizza Hut and realized they were barricading off Main Street because it was flooded out about 1/2 way between the corner and Pizza Hut.

There were two cars right at the driveway entrance to Pizza Hut submerged up over their hoods. A river flowed across the parking lot and flowed away down Main Street. There was no way I could drive there. I literally would have had to swim to the store.

So instead, I returned home, called in and explained that I wasn't there yet because I couldn't get there. "Don't worry about it," said the manager on duty, "We're closing for the night. Just waiting for the water to subside so we can clean up before heading out."

This morning I was scheduled to work 10:30AM. When I arrived, there were puddles all over the parking lot, debris all over the property. Two managers had arrived earlier in the morning to continue cleaning everything up. Dine-in remained closed until about 5PM, and the morning was real slow, so I spent most of my time helping to clean things up until deliveries started coming in regularly about 2PM.

Of course we talked about what it had been like at the store yesterday. Apparently there was about 4 inches of standing water throughout. One of our waitstaff tried to drive in when the water was only 1/2 way up her car door, without considering that our parking lot was a depression. As soon as she started to pull in, her car sank. One of the drivers swam out to help her out of the car. By the time she had climbed out the window, water was about up to the cars roof. One of the customer's cars was entirely submerged.

It was crazy.