Bracing for a blizzard
How does one get ready for the big stormstorm that’s predicted for the Northeast?
First thing to do is to accept it. Then, make sure there’s enough food in the place—although after the almost nonstop eating fest of the last week or so, a little fasting might be a good thing. Next, get the flashlight and the candles out, in case there’s a repeat of the great power outage of 2008. Finally, wait, with peace in your heart.
Where I live, the streets get cleared after a blizzard very efficiently and quickly, and things are usually moving again in almost no time. A far cry from my youth in New York, when we lived on an unimportant side street with such low priority that we could wait days before a plow appeared. Here, it’s also beautiful after a snow—very beautiful indeed, especially at this time of year, when the classic New England homes are tastefully decorated in classic New England style for the holidays, and the evergreens get heavy with snow, especially if there’s been little wind to go with it.
This time, though, those evergreens will remain green and uncovered; there’ll be no shortage of wind. That’s what the word “blizzard” means—a whole lotta snow plus a whole lotta wind:
To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have winds in excess of 56 km/h (35 mph).
Additionally, blizzards must reduce visibility to 400 metres (1,300 ft) or less and must last for a prolonged period of time ”” typically three hours or more.
As for great blizzards of the past, I well remember this one. Fortunately, I was not among those stranded motorists on Route 128, some of whom died because their exhausts got covered and the carbon monoxide backed into their cars. I was safe at home hunkered down with my husband and a fireplace.
Unfortunately, however, I was stranded on a Greyhound bus with a seat near front row and center for this biggee. My bus and I were somewhere in Indiana; I’d been on my way to a family wedding where I was scheduled to be a bridesmaid. In those days, forecasting the weather was a great deal more primitive than now, and nobody foresaw the scope of this storm at the time I joined a ragtag group of people who stepped onto that bus and filled every single seat.
I did have the foresight, however, to wear multiple layers of clothing, and so I was very warm. I must have been hungry, too, but I don’t remember that. I chiefly recall an interminable night of sitting with my Intro to Botany text open on my lap, reading the same paragraphs about xylem and phloem over and over again and trying vainly to absorb the information, while somebody’s pesky two-year-old roamed the aisles unsupervised, his copiously running nose unattended and dripping with the cold.
How long did the bus sit there without moving? I don’t know, but my memory tells me it was at least 24 hours. Did I make the wedding? Yes.
Once you get off the roads, the biggest danger in a snow storm is losing your electricity which shuts down most heating systems.
It’s been snowing heavily here in the Philadelphia suburbs for a few hours now, but there hasn’t been too much wind. I’d say there’s about two inches on the ground, and it’s supposed to continue all night into Monday morning. The forecast is for 6-12″ here.
Around noon I put my car in the garage, gassed up my snow blower and test-started it, and put the snow shovel and bag of salt in the laundry room for easy access. You could say I’m “shovel-ready”.
Snowing and blowing heavily here in coastal CT; anywhere from 10 to 14 inches expected before this thing is over.
As always, the cats have put their snowstorm preparations into effect:
1) Seek out heated cat beds, one on window seat and the other in the human’s bedroom.
2) Stare mournfully at snow falling outside until human feels guilty and heads for kitchen.
3) Plan B: Curl around human’s ankles and meow until human feels guilty and heads for kitchen.
4) Scarf down Fancy Feast, use litter box, and return to 1) for nap until food craving strikes again.
5) When human finally heads to bed at night, pile on top for maximum interspecies warmth and comfort.
snow started at 9 this morning here in Brooklyn. the wind been intensifying all day, now there is a 50%-transparent snow screen behind my window.
so far it’s rather cozy…but I have a slight flu, and eventually will have to get out to a drugstore
at least i have meat and potatoes – perfect blizzard fare
@ Ricki:
Being from Cape Cod, I am not unaccustomed to Nor’esters, be they full of snow or rain, always with wind, and I remember the Blizzard of ’78 fondly (at least now I do) plowing Route 18 through the Bridgewaters, no food, no breaks, no sleep, but the most memorable storm was the one that I endured in Philly.
This must have been in the late seventies, I hadn’t graduated from High School, and I was visiting my cousin who had a job supervising in the circulation department of the Philadelphia Enquirer (he was the head paper boy). It snowed about 14″ overnight and my cousin, well, he subscribed to the mantra of the postal service: wind, rain, dark of night, all that stuff. We started out in his VW Rabbit over rutted roads, the snow scraping the undercarriage of the car. The streets were utterly empty and deathly quiet – the kind of quiet that is unique to a winter night after a snowstorm. We began delivering papers only to find that most of the other paperboys weren’t showing up for work (I know, big surprise). Somehow, I wound up in a retired postal jeep that belonged to one of the paperboys, along with two other paperboys that I did not know and we set out to deliver all the papers.
I recall walking through thigh-deep snow that had drifted into streets bathed in amber street lights. I threw papers onto porches not knowing if they were the right porches. Considering that the papers landed a foot into the snow and wouldn’t be found till spring, I guess it really didn’t matter.
The thing that impressed me most was how completely inept the city was in handling snow removal. Philadelphia is not exactly part of the South so snow shouldn’t be a surprise to city fathers. Their solution to snow on the streets was to mount a snowplow to the front of city sanitation trucks. As the trucks drove through the city picking up trash, the plows would be in the down position. Any snow that happened to be in front of the sanitation truck was pushed 90″ to the right. That was it.
When I was in college, I interned for the USDA in Concord, NH. When it snowed in Concord, you’d never know it. It didn’t matter if it were an inch or two or three feet of snow, the center of town was clear of snow as if there were a roof overhead. The city would move all of the snow from the sidewalks and alleys into the center of the street, where it was loaded into dump trucks and carried away. No snow. Anywhere. Ever. It was an amazing thing to behold – the precision, the expertise.
Not a cold weather fan here, but when I lived in Boston it was kinda fun to lay in supplies and hunker down to ride out a storm.
Tatyana, my sympathies. To avoid this problem we keep a supply of cold, cough, and flu OTC medicines on hand, because when you really need ’em is when you least want to go get ’em.
Accept it? I’m welcoming it with open arms. I even got a 35 mile bike ride in before the accumulation got too deep. A fright going across the GW in high winds with light snow on the pathway though.
I was a freshman at Harvard during the blizzard of 1978. There had been a storm a couple of weeks earlier which had dumped about 20 inches of snow, most of which was still on the ground when the blizzard arrived, leaving us with four feet of snow when you put the new snow on top of the old. My roommate was from Coral Gables, Florida, where his family had moved after fleeing the revolution in Cuba. He had never seen snow before that winter. He got a baptism by fire.
Thanks, OB.
It’s not that bad, yet – it’s that first stage, with slightly elevated temp, sleepiness and loss of appetite (and a leaded forehead and the throat lined with sandpaper) – so I think I’ll have full 2 days before it’ll reach most unpleasant symptoms. By that time I’m sure there’ll be a cleared path to the closest Duane Reade.
The view from my windows (dusted with sparkling snow, like on illustrations to Dickens) – to the huge arches of leaded-glass windows of Lutheran church standing like monoliths under blowing white gusts is truly spectacular!
Snowing like crazy now in Queens. It’s been heavy for 5+ hours. It’s hard to imagine a time when I actually enjoyed snow for the many rolling opportunities.
I feel your pain on the Greyhound ride Neo. I went on a 6 day two way excursion from Pittsburgh to Seattle. Never again. We stopped at every greasy spoon along the way and I must’ve gained 5 lbs. Sitting so long my bum felt soreness to the bone. On the plus side, the scenery in Montana and flat country was a revelation.
I lived in Manhattan during the blizzard of ’96. After the snow stopped but before the maintenance crews removed the snow, I remember seeing a couple of guys cross country ski down Park Avenue. Rollerbladers, bikers, and rickshaws are a dime a dozen. But that’s the only time I’ve ever seen anyone ski down a major Manhattan thoroughfare. I always thought it could have been an iconic photo.
As a 3rd-yr med student in Rochester NY on my gen’l surgery rotation, I awoke after a nightlong blizzard convinced I would be needed as a surgical assistant. Swam thru snowdrifts to the Med Ctr, taking a hour to make the usual 10 min walk. Where was I needed? Not in surgery; the on-call house staff of course had not been able to leave. Needed were dishwashers in the kitchen. Quite a comedown.
Scott – I remember that storm, too! I have a photo with my son, then 10, in a white expanse of what used to be a street, standing on top of a parked car: 6″ above the path level
@ Scott.
I just saw a couple of guys skiing (read: walking with boards on their feet) down Broadway at 72nd.
Loads of people walking in the streets since they are easier to walk on than the uncleared sidewalks.
Re: the Blizzard of ’96
I rode the Staten Island Ferry on Monday morning of that storm, around 7 am. I was watching the news in the early am and they were listing what was closed. Then they had a teaser where they said they’d be right back and tell us what was open. They said the Staten Island Ferry was running! So I got all bundled up and trudged 14 plus blocks in calf-deep snow to get to an underground train (the ‘R’ at 74th St in Queens). Rode that all the way to Whitehall, then hopped on board the ferry for a round trip ride. And what a ride it was! I had never seen breakers like that in the harbor before. The ferry would go way up, then dip way down. On the downward plunge, the water would shoot between the closed doors on the front of the ferry, going a good 10 to 15 feet; the entire front was ice-covered (and closed). I had bought a runny egg sandwich in the ferry terminal and was chowing down on that as the boat did its roller coaster manouvers. Saw a few people not look too well watching me eat that sandwich.
But what a fun ride. And all for the cost of a round trip subway ride.
The only time my alma mater ever shut down for snow was for the Blizzard of ’78. My father took a photo of a snow drift that extended all the way onto a shallow first story roof.
To see if the significance of storms correlated with my childhood memories of them, one time I researched the hurricanes that I most recalled from my childhood. Lo and behold, it turns out those were also classified as the storms with biggest [constant] dollar damage.
Though the biggest storm damage at my childhood home- an uprooted tree- didn’t occur with a big storm. It was a case of rain, wind and age of a tree coinciding. The tree was still vigorous enough to have withstood previous storms with more power.
Only ever been in one blizzard, but seeing how I live in Tennessee one was a strange experience (in 1993).
We ended up with around 3 foot of snow at our house and drifts into the four and five foot range (snow drifts, in Tennessee?). Given than this more than doubled the previously held record from sometimes in the 1800’s it was a big event and shut *everything* down.
We do not have many snow plows, snow blowers, put chains on our tires, or frankly anything people in snowy climates do – a good heavy snow is a few inches and melts off in a day. What little equipment we do have is enough to keep I-40 and I-75 open for those few hours before it melts away and a shovel for our homes (maybe, we don’t have one).
What we do get is ice storms. The ground is cold and the temperature is just a degree or so too high for snow. The rain hits the ground and freezes almost immediately. At least a time or two a year my truck is encased in a layer of ice thick enough that you can’t get it off, I’ve had nearly 1/2 inch thick ice in bad storms. The weight breaks many branches and trees which in turn break a great deal of power lines – in really bad ones the ice can get heavy enough to break the lines directly.
Most of our snows are this way too – it’s rarely cold enough it doesn’t start off as a layer of ice. So while it may only be an inch or two of snow there is a nice thick layer of ice under it. Add in everything here is steep and you can’t drive (it always amusing the first winter people from snowy climates are here, especially after usually making fun of everyone in a not nice way).
Camping equipment is often quite good in emergencies. For instance, sleeping bags will keep you warm if the heat is off for any length of time.
And I have gotten quite fond of an LED camp lantern that I bought some years ago. Unlike a flash light, it lights up a whole room. And with the LEDs, a single set of batteries will last you several days, easily.
strcpy: Exactly this happened in Moscow 2 days ago. Everything is covered by inch-thick ice crust, thousand trees and tree branches are broken. There was a major power outage across Moscow region, 100 000 people were without electricity for many hours. Ice-cold rain falling on frosty land in seconds turned into ice. 30 people in Moscow were injured by falling trees, several hundreds were trapped in Domodedovo international aeroport in complete darkness, without power and water.
people were trapped in Domodedovo due to typical Russian disorganization, thievery, malfunctioning government (this one is an oxymoron…) – resulting in lack of emergency generators, in taxis that charged arm and a leg out of people who wanted to get out of the icy trap, absence of emergency transport – in fact, absence of any emergency/rescue teams.
bad weather is no excuse for statist indifference
In general, Tatyana, I agree with most of these charges. I can add only that this was not just a bad weather, but an extreme weather even by Russian standards: the last icy rain in my memory happened 25 years ago and was not even half that bad. There were emergency generators, but not of adequate capacity to run such big premisses for so long time. Rescue teams worked around the clocks to restore electricity supply, but this was a formidable task: grid cables were covered by ice everywhere and snapped in many dozen places. In short, a full-fledged natural disaster which nobody expected and nobody could predict. All Europe these days is swept by disruption and chaos in airports: London, Paris, Frankfurt. Everywhere government officials explain to angry passengers that they have not adequate means to help them. That aside, Russian government still is better than general population in its recklessness and fatalism: without external control and fear of punishment most Russian people would behave in more criminal and irresponsible fashion than average government official.
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