Just another Minnesota snowstorm

When I crawled out of bed early Sunday morning, I was surprised. Why? I was surprised that it wasn't already snowing. The weather terrorists down by the Iowa border (I was playing poker with some friends on Saturday) were in high gear pimping out the tragic details (ice, loss of electricity, 30 foot drifts, flying cows, etc.) of the impending snowstorm poised to barrel into the area around midnight.

Imagine my surprise then on Sunday morning when I peered out from the second floor of my grand estate to see not a single flake. I quickly blurted out that this was another miss from the weather terrorists. As I've said all winter, I'll believe it when I'm shoveling it.

I went about my day but soon I was proven wrong as the snow began falling. By late afternoon I ventured outside and began shoveling the entire length of the driveway. 45 minutes later it was somewhat clear but I knew, based on how fast the snow was falling, that I'd be revisiting this hellish driveway once again. After all, the city had only plowed my driveway shut once, they had at least two more times in them if not more.

Again around 8 PM I donned my snow gear and made a second, less complete effort at clearing the snow. Feeling like I was made of cooked spaghetti, I wasn't really feeling it. My heart wasn't in it and I just wanted to magically wish the snow away but after that failed I returned to my trusty shovel. This time there was a mere 4 or 5 inches as opposed to the 10 inches I encountered a few hours earlier. In a half-assed attempt, I made two semi-clear tracks through the snow, heaved the snowplow-induced drift out of the end of the driveway and in less than 30 minutes I was back inside to shed yet another pair of snow-encrusted jeans and finally relax. I knew that morning would test me yet again and I had no desire to even ponder what magical moments would await me come sunrise.

But after I popped my contact lenses in I noticed that it had virtually stopped snowing overnight. Had we really escaped with a mere 15 or so inches of new snow? I quickly backed my car from the garage and eventually made it to the grand highway.

That's where it became apparent to me that MNDOT was treating today (Presidents Day) as a holiday. As the majority of the country got to stay home, I still had to venture into the office. U.S. Highway 169 presented itself more as a rutted 1890s country road than a four-lane expressway. The loose snow was cleared, thankfully, but the ruts from the hard packed snow made my car handle like I was driving through a rock-filled ditch or the worst stretches of the Oregon Trail. My teeth clanked on each other and various items in and on my car rattled relentlessly. This was like some poorly thought out amusement park ride (maybe Toothchipper: The Experience!) but based on the number of cars I encountered it was still obviously a highway.

Whatever the case, I still arrived but I know too that MNDOT will have that same highway in pristine condition because that's just how it is here in Minnesota. It snows a foot and a half and 18 hours later the roads are mostly driveable and life returns to normal. So next time it snows 18 inches in some exotic locale like Indianapolis or Oklahome City just remember that it is not news. It happens and we move on.

The idiocy of Minnesota's schools

My day began in the small Minnesota River Valley city of LeSueur. Of course I had to drive there to begin with which sucked but driving back to my office in the metro sucked much more than I can even begin to describe here.

I busied myself, trapped behind a three-wide MNDot snowplow assault on U.S. Highway 169 for 20+ miles, by endlessly scanning through the FM radio dial. Stopping at one point, I heard a Mankato FM station (Hot 96.7) rattling off a few school closings. I was on the road heading back to my office between 9 and 10 AM and the majority of these school early releases being aired were before noon.

Assuming that most schools begin between 8 and 9 AM, this boils down to a nice half-day for kids in many parts of outstate Minnesota. The confusing part was that more than a few of these early closings were around 9:30 AM! Yeah, that means that after the wheels on the bus went 'round and 'round on roads that were already fairly shitty, they have to turn around 90 minutes later and slip and slide down barely visible country roads to take the little brats back home.

What the hell changed so much in a mere 90 minutes to change the mind of school administrators in these mainly small towns? Did the near-whiteout conditions become a total whiteout? Did they actually listen to a weather forecast and hear the part about another 6 or so inches of snow falling throughout the day complete with some wind to further fuck up the already sketchy situation?

The point is that these schools get at least some money for bringing the kids in to the buildings for even a partial day. And some money for the day is better than none. But isn't the safety of kids, which these school are entrusted with, the highest priority? Shouldn't safety trump money any day of the week? What happens when someone makes a bad call and sends the kids home too late and a bus rolls over on an icy, unplowed road and all 38 kids die? Wouldn't it have been a better call to keep the kids home if the weather already sucked before sunrise and was predicted to keep getting worse as the day dragged on? And, really, how many schools a mere one county south of the Twin Cities will actually stick it out and keep the kids in class for a full day?

But all of the Winter weather makes for interesting photos at MinnPics. Check out the stunning photos of Minnesota today!

Christmas cancelled due to snowmageddon

Click to make the snowfall map bigger but the snowphoon, snowmageddon, jesusblizzard, snownami, snownado, hohosnow or whatever else people are tagging it as on Twitter is apparently coming just in time to fuck up your Christmas plans from Wisconsin west through the Dakotas. Of particular interest is Minnesota because that's where I live and even though I have to travel the whopping sum of ten miles on Christmas day I still have to make it in to my office tomorrow (Christmas Eve) and do what amounts to a ton of shopping - even if the Target in Brainerd is out of milk.

Supposedly I'll be shoveling 15-20 inches out here in the southwest Twin Cities but, like every other forecasted storm, I'll believe it when I'm shoveling my driveway and die of a massive heart attack from heaving piles of heavy, wet snow over the already too-tall piles lining my driveway and sidewalks.

Call it stubbornness but I have no desire to own a snowblower. Those things are like the anti-snow - a lot like owning a snowmobile and unlike a snowblower, my snow shovel has never had any issues starting in cold weather. Owning a snowblower pretty much insures that it won't snow and while for plenty that would be pretty awesome I like to see snow falling. Hey, if it's going to be ass-freezing cold it might as well snow to complete the winter experience because it is Minnesota after all.

So when you're housebound for the next few days under a thick blanket of snow, check out the year-end retrospective at MinnPics. The best of the best of 2009 in photographs.

Shopping and the weather in Minnesota

Sadly, my weekend plans involve shopping at some point. And by shopping, I mean sitting in the car while my old lady meanders through a variety of stores that hold absolutely no interest to yours truly. I don't mind shopping - if I'm by myself but if it's my old lady stopping every twelve feet to him and haw over something that's the polar opposite of what we set out to purchase - then we have a problem.

As of this past week, the weather, too, threw a bit of a wrench in to the relative ease of shopping. It's to be expected, each year the sudden change (read: snow) in the weather catches us off guard. I was hoping to push through to late January with a snowless winter so I wouldn't have to buy new tires for the car I inherited from my old lady. That didn't pan out with the somewhat unexpected showfall that blanketed the state earlier this week. With that came cold weather. Weather cold enough that stepping outside and trudging through a packed parking lot while dodging inconsiderate assholes who can't even be troubled to crane their necks backward before backing out of their parking spot at Mach 5 speed is a pain to say the least.

Factor in me pushing a stroller complete with a little girl who's still screaming because she is paying me back for strapping her in to her car seat through those earlier-mentioned parking lots which I forgot to mention are half-plowed at best and you can see why I have opted more and more to, like my dad, sit in the car while either waiting impatiently and scanning the radio dial or napping. More and more in this area I am turning in to my dad - bushy gray sideburns and bi-focals can't be far off now.

But what really chaps my ass is the fact that the closest reprieve from this fabulous, toe-numbing weather is about four months off. Throw in the forecast that I noticed for Saturday and you have a recipe rife for my head blowing completely off. See that shit?!? A LOW of 15 degrees - not entirely intolerable as I'm beginning to adjust to having permanently cold feet but that precipitation - a WINTRY MIX. How is that even possible? It's going to be a whopping fifteen degrees. That's an entire 17 degrees below freezing. A wintry mix? What? That's the kind of crap that makes me want to move to either Arizona or Canada. On one hand, you'd never have to deal with that crap - on the other hand the drivers in Canadia are so used to it that it wouldn't even phase them. But in the end I'll stick it out because I really don't plan on pushing a stroller through an asshole-filled parking lot anytime soon and with my new tires getting to work suddenly got a bit easier.

Now if only we can dodge that chance of a wintry mix on Saturday night. Oh, did I mention that it's a whoppingly-huge 20% chance? Which means that there's an 80% chance it WON'T happen? Why even mention it? Hell, on any given day there's a 20% chance I'll accidentally put on my old lady's panties while getting dressed but I don't post that prediction on a website - well until now.

Rather than complain about the weather constantly, I also, at time, revel in it. Check out the latest photos of Minnesota at MinnPics.

The art of winter driving

Face it - winter driving isn't easy. Especially if you're a Minnesotan. The crippling fear. The clenched white knuckles. The tense arms straining to hold the wheel steady. The soiled underwear from even the slightest unpredicted movement of your car as snow flakes wander aimlessly across the highway. The headache from seeing an endless stream of brake lights. It makes for a universally shitty day.

But why does it make for such a craptastic day? Why do even a few flurries turn us all into crippled invalids unable to drive even half of the speed limit?

It all boils down to varying levels of stupidity. There is the stupid driver creeping along at 25 miles per hour on the freeway. Then there's the stupid driver screaming like a bullet at 70 miles per hour on a two lane county road. There has to be some sort of happy medium between those two extremes. If not, I suppose that there's always the possibility that one (or both) will receive the Darwin Award.

But now that the snow seems to have ended outside my window, we've been given a reprieve. But we all know that there's a day coming - a perfect storm - when it will be snowing at 3 PM and just keep on snowing through the afternoon rush hour - making it last until 8 PM. It's coming and we all know it. I only hope that those unskilled drivers prepare. I hope that the stupid drivers up their intelligence. I hope that I get my front tires replaced.

I also hope that you'll check out MinnPics. A home for all things photographic about Minnesota that likes when you check it out.

Wow, it's snowing in MInnesota, everyone panic

Why in the holy hell do Minnesotans rustle themselves up into shear panic when snow starts magically falling from the sky. You'd swear that God himself were shitting cement blocks on us and that hunkering down in the basement was your only safe course of action. Alas, it's just snow.

But then there's the media, as MPR's Bob Collins pointed out, whipping everyone - not just in Minnesota but in the entire country - in to a frenzy. It's a bit of a mystery why The Weather Channel would have a live reporter in St. Paul chronicling what he must view as the end of the world but to the rest of the country let me just say that it is February and this is Minnesota. The temperature is below freezing once again and liquid precipitation turns to a solid state when that happens and the result is SNOW.

Now snow in Minnesota is a rather rare occurence. We only receive 4-5 feet of snow during an average winter. It sucks to clear from driveways, sidewalks, streets, road and even roofs but we're used to it because, well, we get 4-5 feet of snow each year.

Never, though, will I figure out why a typical late-winter snow storm in Minnesota packing - gasp - snow coupled with wind would warrant wall to wall news coverage.

One thing is sure, if I lose sight of the pine tree three feet outside my office window we're all screwed but until then I think we'll be safe. Slow down when driving because it's better to arrive a little bit late than a little bit dead.

Will MinnPics showcase the aftermath of The Storm? You'll just have to check it out to be sure.

I'm free

Remember last week as I put the month of March on notice. I was fed up with the most namby-pamby month of all. It can't decide if it wants to be 50 degrees and sunny or 27 degrees and snowy. Well, last Thursday I decided I was done. Spring was officially here and Saturday I made it doubly official by stuffing the long sleeved winter wardrobe in the back closet of the house. That little development means that since Thursday my arms have been free to feel fresh air once again. It means that even though today is forcast to be 35 degrees with 8 inches of snow that my arms, no matter how cold they get, will be free to experience the weather (under cover of my medium-weight jacket) in all its glory.

It also meant that I pulled the smoker out this weekend and cooked up two chickens that were damn tasty. It means that last nevening I made some delicious hamburgers whilst cooking with old school charcoal. Sure, the general look of the landscape is dirty and dingy but to me it's spring. Yes, Spring in good old Minnesota means wildly fluctuating temperatures and the possibility of snow in the oh-so-descriptive "Heavy Snow Warning". And yes, I took down the rest of the Christmas lights yesterday as well and I'm not the last one in the neighborhood to do that so I'm not "that guy".

My unencumbered arms will see y'all later.

The month of March is on notice

Tomorrow is March 27 and in Minnesota that can mean one of two things. It will either approach 60 degrees with a light breeze and crisp, blue skies or it will be 30 degrees with gobs of thick, wet, heavy snow piling up.

Of course due to the fact that we only had about six snowy weeks this winter, it will be the latter. Our existing snow in the Twin Cities are has already melted three times including the piles from last week's sloppy dumping but I think this is nature's way of getting eve. Sure, we had the coldest winter in a whopping seven years (that's right, shut your mouths about global warming being a crock because the coldest in seven years is like seeing the world's tallest midget -- nothing too special) but we had only about half of the normal snowfall.

I don't know about others in Minnesota or elsewhere but I am ready for this crap to end. I want my arms to breathe. I want to fling open some windows. I yearn to see buds on our barren trees. I want to be able to vacuum my car without dragging in yet more sand and sludge. I want to bitch about our hot and humid summers and wish it was cooler. I am ready for spring and the fact that I'm ordering my garden stuff this weekend only reaffirms that.