A local resident's cat playing in the snow this morning.
My backyard Crazy Bastard Redneck neighbor trying to shovel his driveway while the snow continues to pummel his work.
Crazy Bastard Redneck's buried Volvo S60.
It all started at 3 AM: I woke up to close my window all the way, since I went to bed with it being open a crack. The blustery winds had woken me up so I shut 'er and went back to bed. 35 mph wind gusts, whiteouts, you name it! A Blizzard Warning was in effect for Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha counties from 7 AM to 3 PM today. (I reside in Milwaukee County.)
Snow was falling at so fast of a clip (2-4" per hour), that it caused a low-pressure system to come in and create an imbalance in the electrons in different levels of the atmosphere (the meterology vocabulary for this is called lift), thus causing thundersnow, or lightning, thunder, and horrendous snowfall all at once.
It is a weird phenomenon; pretty rare, too. Yet somehow, this is the third year in a row I've heard it. (So for every year I've been here, there's been thundersnow!) Last year's thundersnow was the worst. I remember, I was sitting in Physics I discussion on a Tuesday morning at 10 AM, and it just came out of nowhere, with the loudest clap of thunder. I jumped in my seat!
This year, it was slightly less severe, but still enough for me to say out loud to myself, "What the hell was that?"
Final counts: 10" of snow in Milwaukee, baby.
Alllll right!!!
I had heard rumors all day yesterday that it was coming. I scoffed at it, though, because it was 60 degrees here on Monday!
I should have known.
Only in Wisconsin: 60-degree weather and a snow storm that went into the record books, all within the same week.
UWM classes were fortunately cancelled today, too!! So I officially got my first college snow day, yayayayayayayay!
They weren't closed at first: I woke up at 7 AM to check on my roommate Megan to see how she was feeling (she has a cold), and to get a look at the weather and how she was going to get to work today.
By 7:30 AM, 544 closings had been reported.
But not UWM.
I contacted my study buddy Connie, to see if she was going to class. Sense tells me that I only had one 50-minute class today and it was not worth going for it. The Milwaukee County Transit Busses were severely delayed, so it was going to take more work for me to get to class, than it would be for me to sit through the entire class.
I had moved to skip the class, but kept talking to Connie.
Being the little schoolgirl I am, I had a change of heart while I was talking to her. I ended up closing the conversation with her and hopping into the shower, amping myself up to go to class and be a part of all the excitement.
By the time I had gotten out of the shower and was getting dressed (8:30 AM), Connie called me to tell me UWM had closed classes for the day.
It looks like my devotion was rewarded!!! Slick.
I used the snow day watching my Crazy Bastard Redneck neighbor trying to shovel his driveway by hand, just to clear the height of it so it'd be less that piled up in the end. (P.S. he is called Crazy Bastard Redneck because he never ever cuts his grass and it grows all these exotic weeds. The paint on his house is all chipped, the doors swing unevenly on the house's hinges, and the only thing on his balcony are three bar stools and a little black Weber grill. Yee haw! He has a rottweiler and a pitbull, as well.)
I also watched the only thing non-redneck about Crazy Bastard Redneck neighbor: his black 2005 Volvo S60.
He owns this vehicle, and it is one sweet little piece of eye candy. I frequently peek out my window and look into my backyard, which butts up to his backyard, just to stare at it.
Today, it was so covered in snow, it actually looked like a Volkswagen Phaeton to me. AND for being a black car, you could barely make out the stark contrast against the pearly white snow. Interesting.
Mad props to WISN 12 news, by far my favorite news station here in Milwaukee. They had their entire meteorology staff in the studio since 3 AM, as well as all their reporters out on the scenes, journaling and shooting live, the conditions on various streets. One team was even out on North Avenue, where I live! They were just way more west of me, out in Brookfield.
The whole news station was live and on the air for 5 hours, from 4 AM to 9 AM, just covering all aspects of the storm...even if they were exploiting it a bit too much.
All in all, I love Mother Nature!!! Hoorah for a snow day! And now, I'm off to trudge through it to get to Farwell Ave, so Megan, Anthony, and I can feast on Qdoba for supper.
:P
1 comment:
haha.. i know how you so desperately love the snow season ash! it snowed here as well, but not near what you guys got. around our houses here in howard-suamico there's not much at all, moderate dusting if you will... in town around the college this morning and around university, webster, main street, and the latter part of velp into mather the roads SUCKED. my car was going all over the place and there was a 5 car accident just trying to exit the college entrance when i was leaving because there was ice covered roads and the slush and the wind and low visibility, it sucked! but i still went to my lone 50 minute class today! hehe... I so have you beat though, my first college snow day was last year!!!~amber
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