The Holiday Blizzard of 2006
Well, this has been a heck of an adventure. There are a whole bunch of incredible pictures in the photo gallery. Check ’em out!
On Wednesday morning we woke up to snow and wind blowing at a sustained 35mph. Visibility was low, but there wasn’t too much snow sticking to the ground, so Mark and I left for work. At about 10:30am, the visibility was even lower, and snow was blowing and drifting all over the roads. The head of my department sent out an email telling everybody to head home as soon as possible, and then the University sent an email saying the school was closing at noon. I started out towards home at around 11. Mark was sent home at 12:30pm.
It took me about an hour to make my way home. I found myself blowing through snowdrifts taller than my bumper in some places, and I was thankful for the 4wd on the suv. It took Mark about 2 hours to make his way home. In the last 30 feet to the garage, the Passat got stuck in the three feet of drifted snow that had already accumulated on the driveway. Mark and I got out and shoveled frantically trying to dig a path for the car before the snow swirled in and filled it back up. Rocking and pushing, we got the Passat into the garage about half an hour later.
The snow came down, and the wind blew all afternoon and all evening. For a while Mark tried to shovel out a space behind the suv in the garage, but gave up and his work was erased entirely within a couple of hours.
Thursday morning I opened the garage to let Liv out for a walk, and there was a foot and a half of snow piled against the door. I wore my snowshoes out and I was happy to have done so. The whole neighborhood was buried. There was a 5 foot drift outside our garage, and most cars were buried up to their hoods. The plow had been through exactly once in the night, and most of the roads were just filled with feet of snow.
Around noon the neighborhood’s little backhoe showed up, and promptly got stuck in the snow. He dug himself out and started helping us with the shoveling. It went much faster after that.
Mark and I were able to get out for a bit in the evening. Most of the main roads were pretty well cleared, but all of the side streets were still buried. I was amazed at how many people I saw out hiking around in snowshoes or skiing around town. The thing that most astounded me was how much fun everybody was having! Everywhere we went people were smiling and laughing at the craziness of it all. We saw more of our neighbors today out shoveling than we have all year, and all of them wanted to talk about how we were doing and how amazing the whole storm was. It was great to see everybody pull together to help out stuck cars and shovel out driveways. The whole town seemed happy to have a snow day!!
