By tomorrow morning I might be dead….
People are predictably freaking out, the weather guys on local TV are giddy with excitement.
When we lived just south of the Mackinac Bridge in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan, 4-8 inches of snow wouldn’t even be cause for cancelling school. Around here, it is cause for some caution and fortunately I have nowhere to go today or tomorrow.
I will say this, this is pretty unusual weather for the last few years for the last weekend of November. It bodes ill for the winter, it has been mild here for a number of years in a row but back not that long ago we had some stretches where it stayed below zero during the day so I could do the “throw a cup of hot water in the air and it freezes before hitting the ground” trick. We are due for a bad winter.
Snow is starting soon. Good bye cruel world.
Heh, yeah. Same sort of reactions in my AO today. Have maybe 3″ of wet sloppy snow on the ground right now, and already have one major interstate closed due to semi’s being “stuck”. Windy and just over the freezing mark at the moment. I do get the bad feeling the long established pattern has shifted here, and we are looking at a return to the sort of winters we had in the 70’s and early 80’s, including a lot more snow earlier in the season, along with greater likelihood of damaging ice storms.
For the last 2-3 decades, it had become typical here for there to be no accumulating snow at all until January or even February some years. And most of the time accumulations we re pretty light, with the occasional several inches worth. The last really serious single snowfall was in 1982, about 18-20″, which shut down everything here for days. I really don’t want to have to do with that shit. Just a few inches worth is already enough to severely impact traffic, as most people are idiots who cannot handle driving in it.
Me, BCE and Filthie get dibs on your guns and stuff.
yeah every year when the first snow fall arrives the stupid drivers have to relearn how to drive.
Just a darn minute here, Poli! Who invited YOU to the party?
I think I made it quite clear to everyone that if any wealthy bloggers passed on – I was the sole beneficiary and heir to the gun collections. AND to the estates of frequent visitors and friends of said bloggers…
This is MY grift! You and Tiny can just keep on movin’…😡
Fair Warning!
Us Hoosiers look out for each other.
So all ya’ll ferners need to just stand the fuk back!
I’m going to be an ass and have my best guns buried with me like the Vikings used to do with their weapons.
You made me smile with that one Arthur! I remember some NFL highlights from 1969 to 1973 with Pat Summerall narrator, on some epic nasty weather. The Black and Blue Division cold fest stuff. You write well thank you
I remember, as a kid in the 70s, when we got our usual multiple blizzard winters we’d miss a couple days of school, go sledding, shovel sidewalks and push old American 2wd (that’s what %95 of our parents drove) cars out of the snowdrifts. Panic? Nope. Starve? Nope. Crash and die? Nope. What the fuck is wrong with modern Americans?!
I learned to drive in snow in Texas by going out in it every chance I got in the 70s. Doing doughnuts in the school parking lots. Driving all over the countryside. In my 30s, hunted in the Panhandle, saw bigger snow. 4wd and aggressive tires were nice to have for that. Found out Texas actually owned some snow plows. Know how to feel black ice and react to it. Roads were empty, except for a few of us everyone huddled at home like the apocalypse had arrived.
Waiting for the picture of the weatherman buried in snow while the cameraman is in shorts and tee.
We quit watching the weather when they made it like the crime shows “This program has been dramatized for TV”.
As I’m fond of saying, the science of meteorology exists solely to lend legitimacy to economists. Those are about the only two fields (outside of politics) where one can be consistently wrong in their pronouncements, and still retain a fat paycheck. (Paul Krugman enters the chat)
Another thing I like to say is that any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
LOL. Meteorologists is right up there with Astrology, in casting reliable forecasts.
Why, I never leave home without checking the daily stars’ influences upon my fate.
NOT!
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Today’s high in South Tejas is expected to be 80, but then the “bitter, frigid cold” weather rolls in for a week. Daytime highs as low as 58 degrees. And it is rumored that it might dip to 40 (Brrrrr!) on Monday night. They close the schools for a little black ice on the overpass in this area. It hasn’t so much as flurried here since we arrived a number of years ago. Neighbors think we’re lunatics for still wearing t-shirts and shorts when it drops to 65 degrees. But we’re northeast transplants and know a thing or two about winter.
Summer, on the other hand…
I assume the infantilizing effect of declaring that 4-8 of snow is “extremely difficult” is but one small part of the dumbing down of America to make the CIA’s color revolution a little easier.
The big problem I see is that in areas (like my own) where snow has been infrequent for a couple of generations now, is that most people either don’t know, or have forgotten how to drive in it. This means the first snowfall of the season fucks everything up due to traffic snarls. I know how to properly handle snow on the road, but cannot trust most of those around me not to cause needless accidents because they drive too fast and follow to close just as they do in clear, dry weather, which destroys the margins they normally have for timely reactions to their surroundings. The general lack of attention to driving (aka fucking around with their phones, doing their makeup, etc.) makes it all the worse.
So, because I don’t care to risk damage to my vehicle (or to my health and life), I’m pretty well forced to shut down and not go out during at least the first couple of snowfalls we get here each winter. Once “the masses” have gotten acclimated to snowy driving conditions again, it isn’t quite as bad, but it’s still not great. We also lack adequate equipment and personnel to do a decent and timely job of clearing roads. Historically, a place like Denver or Buffalo (as two examples) have the resources and experience to barely blink at a foot of snow, because they deal with it all the time. Here, it’s a shit show if we get 2-3 inches.
If you live in the oldest parts of the city where there is on street parking, because houses in those areas don’t have garages (or only a one car garage off the alley), they don’t even plow the side streets, only the major arterial roads. This has been the cause of much outrage the last few years, when all the “snowflakes” can’t understand why they don’t plow streets where cars are parallel parked on both sides. Well, if they did, the same idiots would be bitching that their vehicles were marooned in place by packed snow banks formed by the plow. The essence of this all is just that people’s expectations are unrealistically high, and their ability to deal with adversity is far too low.
Yeah, society has gotten soft and stupid.
The mass-pussification of America.
In north Idaho we’d get 4-8″ of snow three or four times a week in the winter. So after work you’d get out the quad and plow the dirt road from the road to the house, and plow around the buildings and to the gates of the sacrifice pastures so you could feed and water cattle horses and poultry. If you didn’t do that, you’d be wading through waist deep snow in no time to get everybody fed.
Turns out the quad with a snowplow is ideal for high volume snow-when its really deep you can’t push a ton at one time, so you just set your blade depth a little high at first and keep your speed up between 8-12 mph or so. With the blade canted sharply left-to-right that speed will throw most of the snow clear. You start in the middle and work your way to the shoulder. By keeping your speed up and “throwing” the snow clear, you avoid the deep/sharp snowbanks and you can keep pushing snow all through the season. Just about every year our neighbor got a new piece of snow removal equipment from a small, tracked dozer (useless) to various tractors and as soon as the snow got deep enough he had to cease pushing snow and then had to dig the snow, lift it and dump it-very laborious and messy with the snowbanks growing ever higher.
It took me a couple of seasons to master the art of snow removal with a 400 lb quad, so I figured I’d toss out a few helpful hints.
They closed school for two days in my AO–Middle TN–because it got below freezing and might possibly rain. It didn’t, but the teachers still got their long weekend. Apparently, there is a single bus route that goes up a hill so they shut the county down when it might snow. We even have our own local Ryan Hall y’all wannabe to give us local bad weather porn. I find it all terribly amusing. My commute is down the hall, so it doesn’t bother me much.
The drivers in Southeast Texas are completely ignorant of driving skills and common courtesy. Including the wyepeepoe. They are some of the dumbest.
Add in the native-born mestizos, the nogs, and now the foreign invasion, it’s dangerous as hell to drive on a nice day.
If it’s bad out, I just shut it down and stay in. Not worth getting killed on the interstate by a retard.
That’s pretty well my take on it. I know and trust my own skills, but there are too many morons around who are dangerous even in ideal conditions. I got sideswiped late last winter by a dumb bint in Suburban who was doing 50 in a 45mph zone with 2″+ snow on the ground (prior to any plowing or treatment) in the lane next to me, and slid out of her lane (and into me) as her tires lost grip on the snowy pavement.
The damage to my vehicle would have been far worse, save for the fact that I saw her coming up along me in my left side mirror, and had begun to slow down even further from the barely 25mph I was already doing, so she only caught and smashed up my front left fender and creased a bit of the forward portion of the driver side door. Had to replace the fender, have the door repaired, and get both painted. Got fucked by her insurance company (of course) because they wanted to total my vehicle due to age (with no consideration at all of the condition) but did most of the work myself save for paint, so just about broke even. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have even been out in that shite, but I received an emergency service call that morning, and decided to be a nice guy and go do it right away. The whole thing still pisses me off.
Tongue firmly in cheek “Your Doomed, DOOMED I SAY, Doooooommmmmeeeeddd.
Nothing like the first serious snowstorms to do a reality check on your town’s preps and perhaps yours.
Trees that needed limbing or taken down knock out power lines and a small TEOTWAWKI test occurs.
Idiots relearning or maybe first time learning how to drive in crappy ice-snow mixes. I’ve GOT 4 Wheel DRIVE… Yeah, but you’re going to need to learn that doesn’t mean good Stopping ability.
As I’ve told friends, Shit HAS hit the Fan when EMS and the Power Crews fail to do their duties.
Be careful out there folks. We’re in the zone for 5-8 mixed ourselves.
Tuesday I looked at the brakes on the plow truck, one of the main lines rotted away.
Wednesday I plowed the drifts left from 6″ to 10″ of snow and 40 mph winds using the blade as a brake like I usually do.
Got down to 8° last night, the shop was pretty chilly today.
Weather events = BIG ratings and BIG sales at the grocery and hardware stores.
Follow the money.
I remember when I lived in Ohio where we every winter got A LOT of snow, every snow storm was the “SNOW APOCOLYPSE”.
It’s the same shit down here in Florida, every tropical storm is “OMFG a CAT 5 HURRICANE…WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE”!
We have had over 8in this last week total, plus it was -22C today with the wind we had drifts in places over 14in tall. Fired up the bobcat yesterday and cleaned up the mess the stoned out county plow driver left. They drop piles in front of every driveway in our area so me and a couple other guys go behind them and clean out the driveways of the crap county piled there for all the seniors, and the good neighbors. We all leave one guys driveway plowed in because he’s an ass and tried to get one of us charged for cleaning out in front of his driveway 15 years ago… evidently us running a bobcat at 11am on a weekday was interrupting his “alone time”. Since then he has to do his own driveway.
Unless the snow is over 2 feet and wet you won’t die,
A good neighbor HT to you.
And idiots that complain about kindness of neighbors need to live with the results.
Hope there’s just enough snow piling up at your place to make the rest of the Thanksgiving Day weekend cozy.
The night before the “Blizzard of ’78”, the weather report here in Southern Ohio was a high of 38 degrees, low in the mid 20s & snow flurries throughout the next 24 hours. Just 8 hours later, it was cold hell.Some 4 feet of snow & a wind chill factor of -10 with horrible visibility. Even the Farmer’s Almanac got it wrong that winter. A year earlier, it was the “Deep Freeze of ’77” & the Ohio River was frozen solid for the first time since 1918!
Yep. I remember that! Was a youngster near Lima, OH. I’ve never seen that much snow since. We were making school days up in mid June.
Enjoy the cold! (I am)
The left lane was a sheet of ice and all kinds of drive offs.
Eastbound it cleared up at mile marker 40 and back to 80mph!
Avoid the milk, eggs and butter rush by already having them.