Snow in Houston!

[gwyneth]

For the first time in living memory, Houston got more snow in a day than we did up here on Lake Superior (of course, we've got four to six inches accumulation that isn't going anywhere).

So I was wondering if you Gators threw snowballs, encountered freaked out traffic, etc.

[GatorFord]

Other than traffic (seems everyone freaks out even if it rains, much less snows) it wasn't too bad for me but I'm on the northwest side. I heard the south east side got it pretty bad and had some highway closures. Luckily it warmed up because the cold was killing me. I can handle just cold, but add wind and frozen rain/sleet/snow to the mix and it's just downright unbearable sometimes.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by GatorFord

Other than traffic (seems everyone freaks out even if it rains, much less snows)

I'd rather drive through a lot more snow in northern Wisconsin or Maine than a lot less in Houston or other area which hardly ever gets it.

The worst is somewhere like Washington, DC, where I grew up--happens just enough for people to think they know how to cope, not enough to really do well, not enough for decent equipment to clear it from the roads.

[Hullabaloo]

I was in Atlanta a few years ago for 4 inches of snow - complete insanity.

A friend of mind is from Buffalo, NY. They get the lake effect snows, he sneers at any thing less than 36 inches as flurries.

[GatorWesley]

Yeah the snow was really light, but it was kinda fun driving in it.

[GatorJamesF]

At least its back in the 70's this weekend

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by GatorJamesF

At least its back in the 70's this weekend

Late last night, the prediction was that the snow crippling the Dakotas would get here Tuesday or Wednesday. This morning, CNN said that snow was coming down "in the arrowhead of Minnesota and the thorn of Wisconsin" (why is it that colorful geographic terms are always news to the people who live there?) at one to two inches per hour.

If anything, that was understated.

[RainbowViper]

Being on the cusp of the rain/snow edge-line was a treat down here in the Twin Cities, lemmee tell ya!

Yesterday at 3:00 pm it was raining. Hard.

Yesterday at 3:15pm it was snowing. Even harder.

Today, the roads are skating rinks.

Oh, and @ GatorJamesF:

[ghpk]

Some SNOW pics would certainly look good on this topic.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by ghpk

Some SNOW pics would certainly look good on this topic.

It took another truck with a plow combined with me and my snowthrower more than half an hour to get my pickup truck out of the nicely plowed-in space on the side street where I parked it a couple of days ago.

There is so much snow in the yard it is frustrating my dog, who is genetically designed to move in it--he's doing something like the butterfly swimming stroke and doesn't like it.

After I thaw, I'll try to take some pictures.

As an ex-Floridian the sight of snow on the road and not on a mountain was very strange.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by GatorMJ

As an ex-Floridian the sight of snow on the road and not on a mountain was very strange.

We were in the Tampa area in 1989, when it snowed on Christmas. While nobody from the Midwest would have described it as "accumulation", it devastated most of the state. The rolling blackout accompanying the cold weather affected power for three or four days.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by ghpk

Some SNOW pics would certainly look good on this topic.

The dog is standing in a snowthrower channel that is about 16 inches deep, with about five inches of packed snow at the bottom:



For scale, consider this handy lawn mower, which I meant to bring in Saturday. The snow is drifting over the back steps, to the left of the mower, which are about three feet tall.



Finally, the street in the background is our village's main drag, a state highway. Even when it's "busy", it doesn't get much traffic, but not like this.

[ghpk]

thanks gwyneth for the pics,
It looks all covered by SNOW but a place worth to be at :-)

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by ghpk

thanks gwyneth for the pics,
It looks all covered by SNOW but a place worth to be at :-)

Another 8-10 inches fell between last night and today, and tomorrow is supposed to be worse. If I can get more pictures then, I'll post them. The plow piles are now much higher than when those were taken.

[TeeJa]

Looks like you Folks up north are going to have a winter like we had when I lived up in Muskegon, MI back in the 70's.

Great for snowmobiling. Jumping those 15 foot snowbanks, running the back roads at 100MPH plus.... Snow plow on every truck and plowing every morning so you can get to your job or business. Ahhh, the good ole days...

BTW, will be 78 here again today, your welcome...

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by TeeJa

Great for snowmobiling. Jumping those 15 foot snowbanks, running the back roads at 100MPH plus....

Lake Superior, where the real snow piles up, is a block or so beyond the main street, and between the two is a former railroad easement that's now a snowmobile trail. Therefore, the streets crossing main street, like the one in the pictures, gets a lot of SM access traffic. (Well, a lot here might be four or five a night, but that's more than cars!)

According to NOAA's Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center, we've gotten another 14 inches in the 24 hours preceding noon today. But I think the time is skewed by sensor-read time, so that's probably everything stuff that fell between Thursday and late this morning.

I'm from Cleveland, OH and I know what Lake Effect Snow is, so it was nothing to me.......but it was nice to see, I miss the stuff.

[TeeJa]

Had 3 phone calls from family and friends from the Muskegon area yesterday evening.
They pulled all the snow plows off the roads, 35" on the ground, gale force winds, white out, drifts 15 to 20 FT high, and another foot or two expected?