The Baltimore Blizzard of '09

I knew it was supposed to snow Saturday, but I didn't realize we were supposed to have the blizzard of the decade. Not until I saw some stuff online that made me think, "Wait, how much snow are we supposed to get?" I looked at the forecast, and it said we were in for 10-20 INCHES of snow. Uh...really? I feel like these things are always an exaggeration, so I wasn't too worried. But I did plan it so I didn't have to go anywhere Saturday.

Well, we got it. Plus some. These nor'easterns definitely pack a punch.

Friday night I went to a Messiah singalong (so fun!) and afterwards tried to find a snow shovel and rock salt. They were sold out. I went to the grocery store around 11:00pm, and after waiting in line for 35 minutes (they had ONE guy working, so he had all the self checkouts open, going between them to help people), I saw a display of shovels near the exit. Ahh! But I didn't want to go stand in line again, so I didn't buy one...

My roommate Forreste was still around, so we had a snow day together! We had our blinds up, and watched it snow. (And snow....and snow....) We played games, ate food, watched whatever Christmas movie was on TV, and drank hot chocolate. It was actually really, really fun. We got word that church the next day was canceled, and right before going to bed we realized that the heat on the main floor had gone out. AHH!! The good news is though, the heat for the bedroom floors is separate from the downstairs heat. So we didn't freeze as we slept. But we didn't hang out down there Sunday because it was like a meat locker.

I took measurements at different points during the day as the snow continued to add up. The highest measurement was 22 inches!

Baltimore gets an average of about 20 inches of snow a year. This means that we are now done with snow for the year. Yay!

(Too bad it doesn't actually work like that.)

I took some pictures, so here they are!

View of the street at three different times, roughly 11:00, 2:00, and 8:00.



Out the front door (11:00).

The other way down the street.



The front of my house (house with the black door with the lights on), around 8:00pm.

The backyard was a bit more shielded from the snow than the front, but still got quite a bit! (Taken around 1:00pm.)


Later, at 8:00, the stairs had disappeared.


I took a couple measurements during the day. First off, at 1:00pm.

First the stairs: 7 inches.

Next the sidewalk: 8 inches.

Then the grass: 10 inches!

And the backyard around 3:00pm, 9 inches on the back porch!

Later, for the 8:00pm measurements, we had to upgraded to a 24-inch ruler. The 12-inch ruler didn't cut it anymore! There was about 19 inches on the lawn.

My roommate Amanda's car wins the award: 22 inches on it!

Out back, at 8:00pm: 13 inches on the porch, 16 inches on the garbage can!


I went to see how my car was doing. It was pretty buried!


So, what did we do all day? Well, I spent some time cooking.


Food cooked included:

French bread.

Thai peanut chicken noodles:

Sweet potato pear soup and whole wheat bread:

We also played games. Including Ticket to Ride (several rounds):


Canasta:*

And we drank hot chocolate!

To say that Kara was not amused by the weather is an understatement. (Kaiser hated it even more.)

I hope spring is coming soon....




* Get excited family, I'm teaching this to you and we're playing over Christmas!