It is a week now since the end of this year's blizzard dubbed "Snowzilla". It started snowing afternoon of the Friday before, and it lasted until Sunday morning. The Saturday between was when we saw most of the wind and snow. As I went out to try to stay on top of shoveling, even Millie was not so keen on being out in it and asked to be let in. My first shoveling on Friday night was almost point less, and I'm not sure it did much good to go out Saturday either given all the wind was blowing snow back into places I've shoveled. Only thing I might have accomplished was ensuring that not too much snow piled up outside my front door. By Sunday morning our area had about 3' of snow. The snow in the backyard was as tall as the fence. I had to periodically clear out a spot so Millie can comfortably pee and poo throughout the storm. In the front, the entire street was covered in snow just as high since the plows stopped coming. From what I heard, there was diesel fuel shortage over the weekend so VDOT stopped plowing secondary roads. So the plows for our neighborhood, contracted by the HOA, couldn't get in.
People in the neighborhood came out to dig their cars out, but with the roads unplowed, no one could get out. It was not until Tuesday afternoon before a plow came through. At that point most of the neighborhood came out to finish digging their cars out. It was tricky business though, as there weren't too many places to put the snow. Tensions were high as one woman complained about a trickle of snow that fell towards her car as my next door neighbor shoveled. As if that would make a difference. The complaining woman wasn't even out shoveling. She was probably waiting for her husband to do all the work. Then there were folks putting snow back out on the road in hopes of plows coming through again to clean it up. Was a bad idea since the plows only made like one or two passes.
My neighbors helped me get my car dug out, so I kept helping others soon as my car was cleared. I was out for about four hours and getting to know my neighbors better. It was a good time, but I had been recovered from a cold over the weekend so it turned out to not be such a good idea. I was feeling pretty good after a bit of shoveling and carried on, but by time I was done I was ready to pass out. Then I was so sick the next few days I hardly went to work. So between being snowed in and being sick, I only got like 6 hours of work in the whole week. Even now I am still not feeling 100%.
Given that I was not feeling well, I accomplished very little the whole week. I did get through about 3 seasons of Scandal though....
Today we're in the 50's and the next few days are expected to be warm. Really hoping for the big pile of snows on either side of my car melt away. There's not much room there to back in, and I can probably only do so when my neighbor's car across the way isn't there. Also, I hear from my meteorologist colleagues that we should expect a cold spell most of February. Maybe even another snow dump :(
