Snow Day

Ska_baron wrote:

Only a 2 hour delay for the Federal Government today, but there were numerous reports of 12+ hour commutes home yesterday. My boss's was around around 8. Many were just abandoning cars or sleeping in them overnight. One of my in-laws said screw it and got hte last room in a hotel.

Ah, good to know our nation's capitol can handle such terror as... 4-8 INCHES OF SNOW!

Uba, hope your furnace is holding up!

We got a big dose of rain in Annapolis prior to the snow, but man was it coming down for a while there. I left DC just as it was turning to ice, but as I headed east I outran it and got home without too much difficulty.

My boss in Rockville said you could get on to I-270 but the off-ramps were all snow and ice. They filled with accidents and the highway came to a stop. He was in a Jeep and was able to work around more than most, but his 14 mile commute was three hours.

DC has grown too big too quickly on the tit of the U.S. taxpayer. Half of the agencies in the city should be moved to other parts of the country.

S.

ubarose wrote:

Also, for the second week in a row our our street hasn't been picked up. The plows come by and push a wall of snow in front of the cans, so the garbage collectors won't pick them up.

Burn it for warmth....

The plow here in MO finally plowed our street after 3 days. This just put a big hard patch of ice in front of our driveway that I haven't been able to shovel. So we have been driving over a 6 inch ice bump in and out of the driveway for a week now.

Nowhere to put the snow or trash? That's gotta suck.

I'm so glad I leave work at 4PM, an hour before the clusterfuck. Saw it turn from rain, to sleet, to snow on my way home yesterday and was happy to be home before the great mass of morons hit the streets. Everyone at work this morning was bitching about the commute, but I think mine was only like 3 minutes longer than usual.

billyz wrote:

The funny thing about 4WD is how treacherous it actually is: my bro-in-law is from Calgary and used to race quite a bit of Rally in his youth- he was even an instructor at one point. The way he explained it to me is that once you loose the rear end of a 4WD vehicle all of the necessary maneuvers are so counter intuitive that it's practically impossible for someone without any training, or racing experience to get themselves out of trouble-- this ,he says, is especially true while cornering.

That's a bit too dramatic, IMHO. But I do agree that someone driving an AWD vehicle without the knowledge of what it actually enables will probably do all the wrong things unless instructed otherwise. In slick conditions, if the rear gets loose or people start sliding, usually their instinct is to dynamite the brakes out of sheer panic and/or turn the wheel in the wrong direction.

I'm simplifying, but it's basically "point and shoot"--get the front wheels oriented in the direction you need to be going and get on the gas. The idiots in SUVs on the side of the road are the ones who think it gives them some super powers while braking, when the D in AWD does in fact stand for "drive."

Oh, and winter tires are a night and day difference from even the best all-seasons. It's just a hassle for most people to have two sets of wheels and tires and swap them twice a year.

Weird weather. See, we're at 4500 feet here (and 5000+ at my house outside of town).

You'd think we'd get some snow this year. Jack. Shit. Snow line has been happily hovering around 6000 feet or so, except for one brief storm before Christmas.

There's plenty of snow to ski on if you want to drive up there, but here in the valleys we're going on a week or more of days in the 50s.

And yet the East is just being pounded. Score one for the desert, I guess. The worst part is that we're always prepared for snow, so we rarely get days off when it does happen. We need a massive surprise storm on a Sunday night to get a day off, generally. I think the last time I got an official one was when we got 3 feet over New Year's about five years back.

Stay safe and warm, everyone.

We are having to shovel around the fence now since the snow reaches the top of it and the dogs can just run across once it freezes. This is the most snow I've ever seen on the ground at once short of maybe ski mountains.

For a couple of weeks now, we've been getting light or trace amounts of snow every day, on top of the 60" that we already got this winter. Today, the roads were all greasy with a fresh dusting of snow on top of salty, dirty slush. As I was brushing snow off my car, an old woman walked by and said "I can't wait for spring." I laughed and said, "This feels like spring. Next week, it's supposed to be below zero." She laughed.

THis winters been crazy. So glad I'm not a bike messenger or a structural iron worker any more. On the plus side the missus got today off and we've been having a blast with junior in the snow. The bar was jam packed last night too with late night revelers who assumed they had today off.

This is hilarious. Two years running now and you folks in New England have more snow than we do - lots more. I can't even make a snowman outside! (It's as cold as a witch's t*t though).

Here we go again.

Fuck the Northeast. Fuck it sideways. I'm moving to the desert where I can complain about crippling heat.