Winter 2014/15

[Freed Roger]

Just went out and shoveled the first layer off the driveway - about 1/2". People are going to die shoveling this stuff. It's wet and heavy, at least now.

1/2 inch is shovelable?

[jim]

What a disaster. First off, TWO [expletive] hours on hold with Orbitz trying to get my flight changed. This was probably stupid but I somehow thought maybe Orbitz had a red line to these places, and instead of going through the carrier I went through them. She kept coming back from hold telling me she was waiting on United. My wife called United directly, within 15 minutes they answered, and they got us on an 11:20 AM flight - 2.5 hours later than the flight cancelled.

Then we took PIR back to school - normally a 40-45 minute drive and it was 3 hours round trip. Got stuck twice, we had a shovel and were able to get out and shovel a parking space for him. He has his car at school, we just couldn't stomach him driving himself so my wife drove his car and I followed. Got back home and the driveway which was clean when I left has 3-4 foot drifts by the garage. I'm not shoveling those, [expletive] it. We have this little car port thing that we are just going to leave the car under until we get back.

Nobody got hurt, no car crashes, so all that's good but god damned this was the worst winter day ever.

84 in Cancun tomorrow.

Adios ... I hope.

[jim]

7th biggest winter storm in Chicago history. 16" with 1-3" more on the way at O'Hare, readings over 20" in certain spots. I just shoveled again because the drifts were 3 feet high in the driveway. There is so much snow I don't even know where to put it.

I just hate this [expletive] place so bad.

UPDATE: More snow! I think they are saying now 5th biggest blizzard in Chicago history. 19.3" officially at O'Hare. Because we were traveling we watched the forecast for a while, and the 5 day forecast called for no snow, the 3 day forecast called for 1-3".

My flight is delayed 20 minutes as of now, but not cancelled. Need to shovel and before heading to the airport.

[jim]

i would have thought the airport would be a zoo. it is as calm as i have ever seen it. crazy.

[lukethedrifter]

Don't let em skimp on de-icing the plane.

[jim]

I was just wondering to myself how that stuff works. What keeps it on the wings? My shoveling muscles are sore. One day im going to break down and get one of them snow gizmos. Ive held off one because im cheap and two ive always thought it was kind of a suburban wimpy dude toy. But now i see the value.

[Swirls]

Jim, up north, it's not uncommon for people to have multiple "snow gizmos." I had a large walk-behind snowblower and a compact farm tractor with a loader/bucket that I used for 95% of the snow removal at my house - still use either a shovel or broom for the porch. But I also had a badass 30 year old Wheel Horse garden tractor with a hydraulic lift plow mounted on the front. I only bought the big tractor about a year ago, so it's only seen one winter of use. Before that, it was a combination of the Wheel Horse and the walk-behind snowblower.

I actually bought an expensive John Deere garden tractor and a giant 44" PTO-driven snowblower to mount on the front of it, but it was terrible. I sold it at the first opportunity and went back to the Wheel Horse and walk-behind until I bought my actual tractor. Tractor for the driveway, walk-behind for the sidewalk and various heavily traversed paths in the backyard.

[lukethedrifter]

I'd like to see some pics of swirls NY house in winter.

[Swirls]

I'll see if I can dig some up - Photobucket is blocked at work so I can't look at my library - I think I have some in there though. Really, for the most part they don't look much different than all the other pictures you see online after a snowstorm - it's just we get that at least once a week, sometimes more. And it is all shoveled/plowed before 6am the following morning (seriously, by the time I would leave for work at 6, every road, parking lot, and sidewalk in town was already completely plowed, and every homeowner is outside at 6 plowing their driveway if they didn't get up earlier to do it). The snow is usually dumped into giant parking lots such as Walmart or the crappy attempt at a strip mall in town, although some people still dump it in the river/lake (getting a lot of attention now from the salt content in the snow potentially affecting the freshwater stream/lake).

[Swirls]

Here's a quick video I took one day while driving the tractor. Maybe 12-18" on the ground? Not sure if you can embed facebook videos or not. Perhaps a mod can edit this to make it work.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=74 ... 4660303763

And a picture of the tractor warming up in the barn - again nothing really good or special: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... facfca79dd

Again, mods, feel free to somehow make that picture show up on here, since I'm too dumb to do it if the target webpage isn't a youtube video or .jpg picture.