#2167 snow, snow, snowy snow

It has been snowing here all day. This morning was so snowy that the highway patrol was sending out tweets telling people to work from home if they could or to at least delay going in to work because the roads were so bad. Schools were closed. It takes a lot of snow to close schools here. It hasn't been done in about 20 years. The lieutenant governor sent out a tweet telling state employees to come in at noon. At my office, we told our staff to delay their commute by at least two hours. We are pretty slow right now but we do work in a business office and today was the day we close out the previous month, so there was stuff to do.

I left my house just before 10:00 this morning. This is what it looked like then. There was about six to eight inches of snow on the rail of the deck and on the table.

The roads in my neighborhood had not been plowed. They were snow-packed and slippery. When I got out on the main road, it was wet but icy in spots. The highway out in my area was pretty clear but slick in places. I was driving between 40 and 50 MPH. There weren't a lot of cars on the road, so I felt good at that speed.

Then I took the off-ramp to get to I-15. It had not been plowed. You know that bridges ice up pretty fast and that bridge was awful. I was going at most 20 MPH and gripping the wheel of my dear Subaru so hard that my hand got cramps.

Down on the freeway, the right lane had not been plowed, which is where I merge. There wasn't anyone around me, so I was able to move over in short order. Just changing lanes was frightening because the slush was so thick and icy that it grabbed at the tires and jiggled the car a bit. Up ahead of me a smaller car did not make the lane change smoothly and ended up sideways, the door side of the car facing oncoming traffic. YIKES! Nobody wants to be in that position on I-15!

Slowly, slowly, I made it to the office safely. It felt like the drive took forever but I got there right around 10:30. I was relieved to get to work. I had a few things that had to get done, so I did them and was able to leave around 3:45 or so. It had stopped snowing at the office but I saw on the weather app that it was snowing out west where I live. Sure enough, I had a pretty good drive until I got within a few miles of my exit ramp to get home. It was snowing so hard that it was like a white-out. I had planned to do a couple of things tonight like go to the library and to the store with T, but I just came home and didn't leave for the rest of the night.

And guess what? It's still snowing. The intensity and size of the flakes have varied over the hours, but the snow keeps falling. It's cold, too. The forecast calls for snow until about 3:00 this morning. Should be another awesome commute.

Just for fun, I took a photo of the patio just before I came upstairs to write, just before 10:00 PM, about 12 hours since the photo above.

We've got about a foot of snow now on the deck railing. It hasn't snowed this much in the valley for a long time. I'm sure the mountains are getting dumped on. Skiers will be happy, especially if they have four wheel drive and can get up the canyons.

For me, all this snow and cold just makes me happy that the day after tomorrow I will be on a plane heading to warmth.

Good night! Be safe!