February 1, 2011

Tuesday...the day of the blizzard.
There was such an ominous feel in the air all day. Multiple kids stayed home, and as advised by the school even more parents picked their kids up throughout the day. The early dismissals started around 11, then picked up speed as the day went on. It added even more to the feeling of doom approaching, students being called out and whisked away every few minutes. It was, however, a wise decision by most parents.

The snow started at 2, EXACTLY as predicted. My students and I had been checking radar (because then we at least felt as though we knew what was coming) and right on the hour the first flakes started to blow by. It snowed Monday as well, so the streets were already coated, but through my window I could easily see as the snow piled up dramatically from 2-3:00. The dismissals picked up and by 3:25 I had only a handful of students who all wanted to stare out the window and get hugs (even my tough 12 year olds could feel the tension in the air). I watched the street outside go from being wet to white in a matter of minutes and there was a small wreck out on State Street from a car sliding after only an hour of snow. By 4:00, we hustled kids into the gym to get picked up and the administrators sent us teachers, stupidly driving home, packing into our cars to try our luck with Snowmaggedon.

The drive took 2.5 hours, its usually 20 minutes, but I luckily got home and got a spot just as it got bad. I also luckily chose NOT to try and sneak by on Lakeshore.

 I took Ashland home and made it, not easily but safely nevertheless. My roommate's district called school off on Tuesday in a preemptive blizzard strike (which turned out to be incredibly wise) and so he was home and toasty when I dragged myself in and slammed the door on Mother Nature.
About three hours later, the thunder snow started and it was truly, truly incredible. I went out just to be sure it was happening, wondering if the same safety precautions apply to thundersnow as thunderstorms with rain (which seems ike a "duh" now) and videoed the thundersnow and lightning and captured as much Tuesday night blizzard as possible. Getting good pictures was difficult if not impossible, however, because the snow was blowing so hard it felt like getting punched and it knocked me down a few times. I also couldn't get any pictures of things because the snow covered the whole lens.

The eeriest thing about this night was going outside during the thundersnow (already creepy on its own) and hearing the crowing calls of people - I ended up meeting a man who was hired by the city or alderman or something who was clearing away snow as it snowed... he told me that his company worked exclusively in serious snow situations and there was danger involved in such extreme weather conditions... they had a worker a couple years ago who had died in an Alaska blizzard because they all split up to work and didn't realize for several hours that he had fallen into water. Because of this, they kept in contact by yelling and crowing to each other every few minutes. On the otherwise silent street, with lightning flashing through plumes of snow and wind and thunder rumbling expressively, the haunting calls sounded like unseen anomalies in the dark. I took as much of this Stephen King/Dean Koontz-ish time as I could, then went back in to bolt the door and watch from the window.