8 Inches & Still Snowing

March is soon upon us - the snowiest month
Today we were to get 2 – 4 inches. We should know by now, to beware, when the weather man says the snow won’t amount to much; the opposite usually happens…lots of snow! It started snowing around noon and came down fast. People kept coming into our office and saying “it’s bad out there”. By 2:30, a few staff had left for meetings out of the office, and called in to tell us that the visibility was very bad and that we should all head for home. Lucky for our office, when we tell the operations department in our region that the weather is bad, they are concerned that we get home safely. Not all employment places in this town are like that. I remember when I worked at the bank years ago, the bank never closed, and never let any staff leave unless “the city pulled the buses” as they would say. I guess they always figured people could take a bus home. Oh, I do remember now, that if you lived outside the city or off the bus line, they were more lenient. So, as office manager, I called the head of operations, told him of the weather, and he gave permission to pack up at 3.

When going home during a snow storm or snow fall, with our hills here in Duluth, you take a moment to stop and think about the best way to get to your house. The least amount of hills, the streets that are more level and traveled enough to plow through the snow, but not too much traveled that there’s a lot of traffic. It takes knowledge of Duluth, and a lot of thought to get home with the least amount of hassles! Living here as long as I have, has given me a lot of knowledge of how to drive in bad weather. I don’t even get as shook up as I used to!

I had to make a stop for gas, since I had almost an empty tank, and then headed up the hill that I thought would be the best to get up “The Snow Emergency” route. We have some routes where they are to keep open more than others. It wasn’t one of our steepest, the one I usually take to get over the hill to my house, is very steep. The cars were lined up the whole way up to Woodland Avenue. Cars were slipping and sliding. I tried to stay a safe distance behind, there are 3 lights on that Avenue, and of course I sat through many red ones. I turned right on 4th Street (a level street) so that I didn’t have to go the whole way up to the top. There was a lot of snow. It didn’t seem that the plows were out at all. Some times when it snows so fast, as it was doing, they don’t plow. I forgot to get milk at the gas station, so stopped and got milk at one closer to home. Everyone was talking about how difficult the travel was. I asked where the plows and gravel trucks were on the snow emergency route of 21st Avenue. To my surprise I was told the snow emergency route is 24th NOT 21st. Well, no wonder I had so much trouble! Guess it’s been so long since I had to deal with driving in this stuff that I forgot which avenue the emergency route was! I made it to our street, and shoveled an area in front of the house, to get the car as close to the curb as I could. I don’t like to put it in the driveway, until the men of my house snow-blow, otherwise I might get stuck!

Now you may know, my husband, Bob is a fitness guru these days, and goes to work out after work every day, no exceptions. He does not let the snow scare him off (note, I used the snow as an excuse not to stop there tonight!). Rob works late tonight, so they will be out there cleaning well into the evening. One good thing, the snow is light and fluffy this time, and it’s fairly warm. The weather man just said that we got 8.4 inches over the hill here, and will probably get one more inch. It’s to taper off around 6 pm. I hope it will be done, because we plan to drive to Hudson tomorrow to see our daughter and her family for the weekend. I just heard that it was 41 degrees and sunny in the Twin Cities (Mpls.-St. Paul) today and no snow on the ground!

Now, about the photo above, this is from our one and only snowstorm we had this winter. It is our house. Note how beautiful our trees in our yard and neighborhood are after a snow fall. I just realized when I was posting photos last night, that I had these, and thought I’d use them some -time I wrote about snow, I didn’t have to wait too long did I?