Nanook of the North

So, I got to the used bookstore today in time to be handed a Memo from the mall office, declaring the mall closed. Everything was closed, not because of the snow we've gotten, but because of the impending storm.

So, happy and puzzled, I closed up the store and got a ride home with the girl I would have been taking over for. In the time I got there until the time I got home (maybe twenty minutes) an inch of snow had fallen. By the time I'm done with this blog post, another two will probably be down on the ground.

I cannot see across the street. I just see a wall of fast-moving snow mixed with ice that turns everything into an impenetrable wall when it hits.

The grocery stores are closing, the banks are closing, the mall has closed.

The city and county have run out of snow plows and snow plow drivers. The shift they have going now has been going since four this morning. They have no choice but to stand down and go home. They have no one else to send out. The roads and streets are therefore (as of four o'clock) completely unplowed until tomorrow, when this same shift comes back to work.

I LOVE IT!

I adore this kind of bad weather. I love bad weather in general. When thunderstorms turn the skies strange shades of green and yellow and silver, when the thunder is something you feel in your feet and the lights flicker in time with the lightning, I'm happy as anything and prowling the house. Or I'm out walking in it, if I can get away with it.

With blizzards, I would bundle up and go out, but blizzards like this one would white things out enough that I'm not confident enough to be roaming the country-side. I like the bad weather, but I'm not stupid. I have no desire to get turned around and freeze to death.

Still, I'm happy as anything.

We have over a foot and a half of snow on the ground. We're predicted to get another twelve inches, but the prediction keeps rising. The Doppler radar shows a long and mostly verticle strip that's passing up, straight through us. And it's swirling too, so it'll come get us before too long again.

Hooray!

I'll report further, unless the ice kills the power. In which case, I'll get my notebook and my fountain pen and get a ton of writing done instead. There's no downside here.