Living in a Winter Wonderland (Arghhhh!)

OAFS Photo

Okay, you really can't see anything through the screen looking north from the top of the battlements here at Chez Sarge, couldn't be helped. The snow was coming down so fast and the wind was pasting it to all four sides of the house. That was at 0051 hours Monday morning (technically, Sunday night for those who hadn't gone to bed yet, that would be me).

Woke up to this Monday roughly 12 hours later ...

OAFS Photo

Okay, I slept until almost 1130 Monday morning. I woke up at 0830, listened to the wind howling and decided to stay in bed. Nothing to get up for and in my defense, I only had about six hours of sleep Saturday night. So I was paying down a sleep deficit. But every window was snowed over from the wind.

Anyhoo, it's still snowing as I write this, here's a few photos I took in the last hour ...

OAFS Photo

The two fences you can barely see through the snowy screen are six footers. Granted, there has been a lot of drifting due to the high winds during this storm, but I think you can agree, that's a lot of snow.

OAFS Photo

I managed to wedge open the kitchen door because I wanted a photo of the outside unobscured by the screen windows and there you have it, the Blizzard of '26.

OAFS Photo

See what I mean by "wedged open"?

Now this isn't my first rodeo (blizzard, snow storm, what have you) and it probably won't be the last. So far, as of 1530 on Monday, the wind has eased up and while the snow is still falling, it's starting to taper off a bit. It's not coming down at 3.5 inches an hour, like at the height of the storm, but only 0.3 inches an hour. Praise the Lord, we haven't lost power though a lot of folks in the area have. That snow is pretty heavy as the temperatures were near freezing. Heavy and wet.

Late yesterday the governor of Little Rhody announced a travel ban starting at one time for commercial vehicles and an hour later for private travel. Yeah, I bristled a little bit at the "order" banning travel, but seeing the results today (a number of tractor trailers stranded around the region causing the first responders to deal with that as opposed to helping the power crews and dealing with real emergencies) I realize that giving the governor that sort of power is probably necessary. People are idiots. Mind you, not bad people (though there seem to be a lot more of those these days) just not real smart.

If you're out and about during a travel ban, it's an $85 ticket, do it again, you might wind up in the hoosegow. We also get parking bans in this area, if you normally park on the street, you have to move your vehicle to a parking lot (towns provide a list of those) so that the plows can get through. Don't move? They will tow your vehicle, over 300 cars were towed in Providence as of Monday morning. People just not paying attention or just being assholes. Take your pick, we have a lot of both in the region.

Ya gotta love winter, and I do. Otherwise I would've retired down south (probably Maryland or Virginia) but the heat down there in the summer is way too much (mostly the humidity). Besides which, my roots are here in New England, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable anywhere else for any length of time.

So yeah, the weather outside IS frightful but ...

OAFS Photo

Okay yes, that was actually Sunday at lunch at Aidan's Pub, but you get the idea.

Stay safe out there my fellow New Englanders (and everywhere else hit by this blizzard), see you on the morrow.