The anticipation was building all day yesterday as people made frantic trips to the grocery store in light of media reports describing the impending snow storm as "epic" and "worst of the decade". I called and made arrangements for our driveway to be plowed in the aftermath, fed the birds, pulled the shovel out of the garage and placed it by the back door, and then hunkered down in anticipation.
By the time the kiddos left for school the weather service had already issued a blizzard warning for our area. I remarked I didn't ever recall going to school under a blizzard warning, but evidently we are tougher these days. When the true storm finally descended upon us mid-afternoon, after an early dismissal of students across northern Indiana, the anticipation was at fever pitch in our house.
As the waning hours of daylight turned to night, though already dimmed by masses of snow in crushing waves, we thought to ourselves.....stranded. And what if the warnings of power outages, five foot drifts, and impassable roads came true? Could we eek out an existence until rescued?
Though we didn't know it at the time, the storm hit its climatic height around 8:00 p.m., at which time I told the kids to step out onto the front stoop to see what a blizzard felt like. Walls of pelting snow and sleet beat against the house and scoured the ground. When we curled up in bed, having looked out the windows once more, we could hear the winds howl and the snow beat against our thin and fragile old glass window panes as the sashes rattled in their frames.
Then morning broke. I heard no more blowing. As daylight wakened the reshaped terrain, the brutal force of mother nature's wrath was revealed. Indeed there was snow, and there were drifts......but calling this the "blizzard of 2011"? C'mon. It should be noted that the number of vehicles on our road in the last 19 hours equal just 3 (includes one snow plow), which was also the same number of deer we saw walking down the road past our drive.
And as I type this, our snow plow is breaking us free from this frozen and isolated prison.
5 comments:
Be thankful for small blessings. You survived! You're not stranded!
explain to me why you are being plowed out, no offense, but you are the only house on that road for miles. There are subdivisons with hundreds of homes that have yet to be plowed at 6:30pm Wednesday! There is an example of outdated policy!
What's with the mayor and county with an incident command center. Emergency services handled the blizzards of 1978 and 1982 just fine without an incident command center or should i say senter.
Put a little love in your hearts anonymouses...just sayin...
Kind of gives me a warm feeling inside as I was reminded of the blizzard of 1978. Carefree times those days where we just had free days from school (almost 2 weeks!) as LaPorte County wasn't that great about getting the country roads plowed. That was also the year that snow drifted over our house and buried it! Imagine waking up at 11am and it still seeming that its dark out!
Post a Comment