This past week was full of sunshine and 60-70 degree temperatures. It was beautiful weather for February, but it was especially wonderful considering what the weather was like around here last year. Two storms (February 5-6 and February 10-11) dumped so much snow that weather records were shattered. Our area received just under 3 feet of snow in the first storm and almost a foot of snow in the second.
When we moved to the area, we heard that winters were relatively mild with minimal snowfall. We frequently drive over the Appalachian Mountains to spend time farther north, so we did have boots, warm coats, and winter tires. However, we never thought we would need to have a shovel. We ended up digging our car out of the snow with a bucket, an ice-scraper, and a broom. It took us a little over an hour and a half of hard work to dig the car out from the first storm. We own a shovel now.
We had a week and a day off of work, and the clean-up process continued throughout the area for a few weeks. The folks who cleaned our metro station's parking lots pushed the 3 - 4 feet of snow as close as they could to the corners. Despite all of their hard work, several rows of parking remained covered with 8 feet of snow or more. In fact, some areas literally had piles of snow over 2 stories high. I wish I had remembered to take a picture of them, but life isn't perfect. Over the course of 3 months (3 months!), parking spots became available as the snow melted. The return to summer temperatures in mid-May finally melted the remaining snow.
On this date last year, I was finishing my first week of work after the storm. I was parking in what is normally an over-flow parking lot at the metro station, and I was getting used to walking past oceans of white downtown. (The snow was not removed from the wider sidewalks until a week or two after the storms) I watched a mail truck drive down a clean sidewalk because the street was still covered with at least of foot of slush. It was all pretty incredible.
I wish I could have finished this post earlier in the week, but it is better late than never. Here are pictures taken after the first Feb 2010 snow storm and pictures of the same spots that I took today:
(Note: The Jeep was sitting on top of at least 2 feet of packed snow.)
Happy President's Day Weekend!
Don't know if you've seen Pittsburgh weather news, but yesterday they got hit with a much bigger than first expected snow storm that wreaked havoc everywhere. We've heard Pgh. Intl. recorded 9.6" - one of the newscasters last night said it could even be called a mini-Snowmageddon!
ReplyDeleteThe big problem was ice under the snow. Here to the south we got more rain, then sleet, and finally snow. We officially totalled 8" here, but it's really heavy & wet - great snowman snow.
And not to be outdone by you DC folks, we actually had thundersnow. One flash of lightning we could see out both the back and front of the house followed by one rumble of thunder - but enough that at the same time we both yelled "thundersnow!"