A Bad Winter About to Get Worse

This has been a miserable winter in Southern Wisconsin. In fact, I'm about ready to consider it the worst one I've lived through. Not too shabby considering I grew up in the northwestern part of Wisconsin during a time known for snowy winters. We've had multiple Snowpocalypses this year, a phenomenon we normally only get to joke about once or twice a year, and the local meteorologists have been warning us about another one for a couple of days now. This storm has just started to roll into my neck of the woods, and its first punch isn't pretty. It started raining about 15 minutes ago, and upon hitting any surface, that rain has turned to ice. I can already ice skate across my wood deck. I'm not sure how long it is going to ice, but we are scheduled to get 4 to 6 inches of snow on top of whatever ice we get. Other parts of the country can tell you that an ice storm followed by wet, heavy snow is a recipe for disaster. Right now, I'm hoping that the air temperature gets warm enough here to melt that accumulating ice before the snow sets in.

That's never happened before

I've seen some wild weather since moving into our current house. I can remember watching debris fall from the sky from the Stoughton tornado, and then eating dinner huddled in the basement with the lovely Mrs. Jib. I remember a wild wind storm last fall that caught me outside and off-guard. In the short time we've been here, I've never seen a gust of wind blow one of my doors open, though, and it just happened. I'm going to need a pliers to pry my cat's claws out of the ceiling.

Yuck

We're over at over a foot of snow total since snow start on Friday, but last night's contribution was uglier than the previous night's. The lovely Mrs. Jib came home from work this morning but couldn't make it down our street. After it was plowed, she couldn't make it in the driveway because the plow had left boulders of snow stacked there. I fired up the snowblower (best purchase I've ever made), and it handled the snow okay, but neighbors with smaller snowblowers were struggling. People who were shoveling really struggled with the concrete-like snow.

I helped a few neighbors out by blowing their sidewalks, and the teamwork that they showed me was very nice to see. While I quickly cleared their water laden snow, they cleaned up the schnivels I left behind on my sidewalk and cleared the small walk up to my house. I've heard a lot of stories about the stupid and pig headed people who had trouble with the snow last night, but I've also heard a lot of stories about people helping one another. The difficult people make you shake your head, but the people helping each other more than makes up for it.

Live from the WJIB Super Storm Team Dopplar 7 Winter Center Weather Deck

I just stepped outside to shut off a light that was on in my garage. We've had 3 inches of snow since 6 pm from the great blizzard of '07. The storm has gone through an interesting change here, though. It isn't snowing anymore. I guess you could term it sleet, although it is awfully close to being freezing rain. And it is lightning. At this point, I'm rooting for the snow to come back because I'm not anxious to deal with the side effects of ice.

Rage against nature

How exactly does one rage against nature, you ask? Well, I for one toy with the idea of waiting until a blizzard rolls in, and then heading outside in shorts (and a coat-I'm not crazy) to grill up brats and dogs for dinner.

I may let the lovely Mrs. Jib talk me out of that one later, even though it seems like a damn good idea right now.

Round One to Mother Nature

Here in Wisconsin, along with large swaths of the nation's midsection, we are facing the biggest "white death" of the year. The weather forecasting services have been particularly squeamish on settling on a prediction for the final snow depth from this storm, so until this evening I assumed we would get less snow than the hype led us to believe. I think that assumption is going to be wrong. At 8:30, here in my little slice of south central Wisconsin, there was no new snow on the ground and just a couple of flurries floating in the air. At 9 pm, I was surprised to see that there was about a half inch of snow on the ground. 15 minutes ago at midnight, I went outside and did a quick measure of the new snowfall. That measurement came to 5 1/4 inches...in three and a half hours. Tonight was supposed to be the light night of this storm. It looks like we are going to see one of our deepest snowfalls in several years.