You snow crybabies can shut your pieholes unless you see this when you look out your windows (more photos here):
One of my earliest memories is from that blizzard (March, 1966). I remember watching my Dad bundle up in two pairs of pants (an old farmboy trick) so he could walk to a neighbor’s house and deliver a baby. Mother and baby did fine. Dad grew up a few miles from where the picture above was taken.
That story pales in comparison to this one from the current (paper) issue of South Dakota Magazine, which I’ve included after the break:
Every other South Dakota pilot knew enough to stay on the ground on March 20, 1947. A wicked spring blizzard was raging across West River. However, well-know Spearfish pilot Clyde Ice’s mind wasn’t on the weather. His son Randall had died in an airplane crash several days earlier. The funeral was scheduled for that very afternoon
Dr. Gordon Bettis knew that his pilot friend was grieving, but the Spearfish physician was in a dreadful bind. He was needed 80 miles north, on a Harding County ranch, where young Eleanor Peterson was going into early labor. Dr. Bettis talked to every pilot in town and none were willing to risk a flight. Finally he called Ice, who agreed to meet him at the airport south of town.
“It was a whiteout” […] Once in the air, he followed a telephone line to the Little Missouri River, sometimes flying within 10 feet of the wire, then used the timbered shoreline to guide him to the Peterson ranch […]
Once they’d landed, he suggested they stay at the ranch until the storm blew over. Dr Bettis explained that the newborn baby […] weighed barely three pounds and would not survive without an incubator.[…]
They flew back in conditions Ice compared to having a pillowcase over his head. The baby spent three months in the incubator, survived, and she’s now married with three kids.
Of course, this kind of heroism (or, more correctly, “professionals doing their jobs”) happens all the time in the Northeast, as it did in New York City during the past couple of days, with some help from New Jersey.
maye
It’s in the 50s in So. Cal. and I’m freezing. Time to move to Roatan.
Michael D.
Holy crap. Looks like the guy’s so close to the powerline that he’s glowing.
kwAwk
This is damn funny.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Michael D.:
Stick your tongue on the frozen power line. I triple-dog dare you!
HRA
I offer the Blizzard of ’77 in Buffalo. If interested, google it. I am at work now.
ThresherK
There’s at least one great book on the Blizzard of 1888 I read (pre-internet, no cite). Sounds like what’s happened recently, except this required less snow to bodge things up, and there are better machines to remove it this time around.
OTOH we were able to get in some XC skiing close to home on a rail trail. I hope to be telling some wide-eyed tots about how “This used to be a ped path before you were born” in the far future.
Chyron HR
A few miles in which direction–down?
Cris
What I really love about snow days is how it reminds me how powerful nature is. It’s easy to forget, with the amount of technology we have to overcome the obstacles of our environment. We can cross high mountain passes and wide rivers at 75 mph. We can sit in warm, dry rooms with hot food and drinks, in lighted rooms on a windy winter evening.
But sometimes, it’s just too much. You can’t get to work. You can’t even get out the door. Your busy life just has to be put on hold, and you remember that you live on Earth.
Sue
I didn’t know they had photoshop back then.
DJShay
@HRA: Google and found a Picture Go HERE to see lots more. Man, I wouldn’t wish that on my
worst enemya RepublicanAlwhite
I remember ’65 has colder than anything, walked to school 3 days that year with temps near -40F. ’66 was warmer but several big snowfalls, some of those pictures seem familiar.
For real suffering though google “armistice blizzard”. 11/11/40 started out in the ’60s then temps dropped like a rock, then rain, sleet and finally snow and wind that must have been unbelievable. Many people froze to death.
mistermix
@Sue: Heh
The strange thing about blizzards on the open prairie is that you’ll have 15 foot drifts in one spot, with open ground a few feet away. It’s like sand in a desert. He’s standing on top of a drift.
justawriter
I have home movies of my dad helping shoveling off the roof of a neighbor’s house after it drifted over after the March 66 blizzard. The only thing you could see of the house was the top brick of the chimney and the TV antenna. It took hours to get down to the second floor window so they could out.
JGabriel
From an EMS1 story, linked by mistermix @ top:
Never. Believe. Anything. In. The. New York Post.
Unless you’ve verified it with three separate, non-Murdoch, sources. It’s a rag — the equivalent of Fox News on shit-stained toilet paper.
.
WereBear
@mistermix: The thing about the open prairie is that the wind reaches you after picking up speed and cold over several other states.
I now live in The Frozen North; and I still prefer it to the prairie of my youth. :)
HRA
@DJShay:
Thanks for finding it.
LGRooney
My mother’s father came from Ukraine, in a part that was at the time still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. They arrived to Canada in 1900. Living in hand-built mud shacks as the family worked its way across the country, they finally settled in Manitoba and some of the family went south to North Dakota (where Mom was born). The first two winters were so harsh that some of the family decided to go back to Ukraine. That was around 1912. No one heard from them again. Mom does have some stories to tell about winters there, however, that will make you wonder why anyone would live there year round.
mistermix
@JGabriel: I don’t know about that part (but it seems like a reasonable way to triage with the backlog they had). The part I found interesting was that the NYFD performed a home delivery during the height of the blizzard.
Napoleon
@HRA:
I was a sophmore in high school (NE Ohio) that winter and that was the best year ever for sled riding.
p.a.
@Michael D.: prolly not power- old telco iron wire plant; multi-party lines.
Tom Hilton
You people have no idea what hardship is until you’ve spent a winter in the Bay Area. Sure there isn’t snow or sub-zero temperatures or iced-over roads or any of that, but there is a shit-ton of rain. Which is just…depressing.
The Grand Panjandrum
We got a mere 18″ of snow the other day which was the first real snow of the year. I shoveled my quarter mile long driveway by hand just for a decent workout. Then, I walked my kids to school. It’s five miles uphill. Both ways! I can’t wait for winter to get here so I have something to bitch about.
LGRooney
@Tom Hilton: Remember it well but I also remember it depends on which side of the hills one lives. Mid-December through mid-February in Sunset was miserable beyond compare. However, flip to bay side, and you would get a cold breeze but it was often clear during daylight hours. Same divide on East Bay. Bay side was wet and miserable, the fronts passing through the Gate and around SF peninsula, but it was sunny and pleasant in the valley.
Jewish Steel
I remember snow so profound in IL that the horses could step right over fence and leave their pasture. They passed on that. I think they were a little freaked out by the amount of snow and decided to stick around the nice folks who kept bringing them hay and oats.
Violet
It’s in the 70’s where I live today. I’m wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Might have to turn on the a/c.
LGRooney
@mistermix: You’re right about the drifts but not about what he is standing on as that drift looks like it covers all of ND.
burnspbesq
We have pictures from the winter of 1959-60 in Syracuse, of my dad and our freshly shoveled driveway. My dad is 5’9″, and snowpile next to the driveway is 2x his height.
We also have pictures of my parents bringing newborn me home from the hospital with a foot of snow on the ground. That doesn’t sound all that odd, until I tell you that my birthday is in the middle of May.
quaint irene
What’s the point? There’s no way to win in the one-up-manship weather stories. Somebody’s always going to have had it worse.
artem1s
@DJShay:
’77 was pretty bad across Ohio too. Mostly cause they rarely saw that kind of snow. I missed 30 days of my junior year of High School that winter. We lived out in boonies SE of Columbus and snow removal equipment for the county was a fleet of two snow plows that mostly put down sand on the gravel roads. yea, redundant.
My family was snowed in for about 2 weeks (at least 4 days of it without power, which meant no heat or water). The county had to bring in a front loader to dig out our road so the snow plow could get through. I was in drivers ed that winter and got to practice parallel parking on about 18″ of lumpy ice in the school parking lot. Slant parking is for wimps.
theturtlemoves
That’s pretty cool. I knew Clyde Ice, at least to trick or treat at his house as a kid. I remember him having a landing strip in a field pretty darn close to a residential area in Spearfish. It’s all housing developments now, but they used to sell produce at a farmers market right near the strip. Really cool guy and he flew well into the late, late golden years of his life and the little podunk airport outside of Spearfish is named after him.
burnspbesq
I hesitate to post this here, because some of the more unhinged in this commentariat might get ideas, but here is a historical example of effective regulation of financial intermediaries.
http://underbelly-buce.blogspot.com/2010/12/that-bernanke-fella-is-one-brave-dude.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FopYU+%28Underbelly%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
bemused
Tower, MN had a record low of minus 60 in Feb, 1996. It was an mind numbing cold winter with huge amounts of snow which didn’t melt until sometime in May. I remember we had to be very careful unplugging the car engine heater cords so they wouldn’t snap. It was really weird to see a cord standing frozen upright in place looking like a cobra snake.
No one went anywhere but to work, fetch groceries and back home, it was just too dangerous. After that intense cold spell broke, we were suffering from cabin fever and went out with friends to a local bar. We were giddy to be out of the house and marveling at how warm it felt outside….it was minus 20.
Jager
When I was in High School one of our favorite post blizzard activities was to find a nice stretch of slippery, open road, get the car going about 40 miles an hour, jam on the brakes so the wheels locked up, shift into reverse, let off the brakes and floor the gas pedal…one hell of a ride. Then of course, on the way to school one morning, my buddy Don did the “trick” on a two lane residential street in his Mom’s Cadillac Fleetwood, no harm done but we did end up in somebody’s front yard about 6 inches from the front steps. As we pushed the car back onto the road, the guy was standing in his doorway yelling, “get that god damned caddy out of my yard”!
Montysano
@HRA:
During that blizzard, I was working as a roadie for a band. We were making a Buffalo-Rochester-Syracuse swing. I’ve never seen snow like that before or since.
Gus
@Tom Hilton: Rain. Aren’t you the hearty one? :) Actually I did have a friend who lived in Portland for a couple years say that he prefers Minneapolis winters. Which I find bizarre.
Tim
Actually, I think that picture is fake.
ChrisS
@Cris:
It’s easy to forget, with the amount of technology we have to overcome the obstacles of our environment. We can cross high mountain passes and wide rivers at 75 mph.
I thought about that when I once drove across the country through Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and upstate NY … in February … in six days. I thought about the 1800s, when people waited until late March to start that trek in hopes of making it before the next winter. A lot of them died. Even into the 1950s it would have been considered a hazardous trip.
I did it in six days and hot coffee and meals everyday. The worst thing that happened was that it was so fucking cold in Buffalo, WY, that the volume on my stereo broke and was never the same.
DJShay
@artem1s: I can’t imagine that much snow. I live in the south and anxiously await the 1 to 3 inches we occasionally get, but man o man, THAT much snow? DO NOT WANT. I read somewhere that in 77 they had to haul excess snow to the south on trains.
Geeno
A friend of mine was stranded in Buffalo for five days in ’77. Even after many of the main roads were cleared, there was $500 fine (a/o 90 days in jail) for being on the roads to prevent traffic interference with emergency vehicles.
Tim
At the link below, it is claimed that picture was taken in Russia. Either way, it is definitely fake. Think about it. No way snow that high would be that even or firm. Why does the ghostly black male figure have a “glow” all around him? If the snow was that deep wouldn’t all houses, trees, and human life be buried and extinguished? Of course, maybe the pole is only two feet high…
http://salz.soup.io/tag/Snow
Jager
@maye:
Know what you mean, I grew up in ND, went to school and lived in Boston for 30 plus years, moved to SoCal 5 years ago and 50 degrees here feels really cold, damn cold in fact!
ChrisS
@mistermix:
The part I found interesting was that the NYFD performed a home delivery during the height of the blizzard.
My buddy delivered their son in the front seat of his wife’s jeep last winter.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/madison_county_woman_delivers.html
eyepaddle
I spent a season working as a fuelie in McMurdo, and I was flown in right at the end of Antarctic winter (Early October). And as it turns out, just to keep me happy the region decided to set records for frequent “hurbies” (a hurricane blizzard). And I was lucky enough to draw the first stint at the ice runway. I loved (well, hated actually) getting to the runway fueling station at 5:30 every goddamned morning and digging all of the fuel hoses out from under 2 feet of antarctic snow. At least it was dry–it was kind of like carving styrofoam, but a bit heavier. Once that was done, I got to fight to start up the diesel pumps so that I wouldn’t be the one holding up the USAF or the NY Air Guard when they were ready to fly.
It was usually somewhere between 20 and 35 below, so my nose always got really friggin’ cold as we trickled in 10,000 gallons into decrepit C-141s at 110 gallons per minute.
Fortunately, having grown up in Minnesota I wasn’t shocked by the conditions, but yes, they were a real jump up in level of difficulty.
ChrisS
@Geeno:
The ’77 Buffalo storm was interesting because it wasn’t so much a snow storm as it was a wind storm. Lake Erie was frozen over and covered by a foot and half of snow, all of which was blown onto to Buffalo by 50+ mph winds.
Tom Hilton
@Gus: I think you mean ‘hardy‘.
rube
In the early 1950’s, South Dakota height spec for rural pole lines was set at just enough to clear the head of a boy on a Heston Mower– 9 foot 8 1/2 inches. That picture is no big deal.
Jay in Oregon
We used to get several feet of snow in northern Alaska where I grew up, and drifts that would cover our picture windows.
Sadly, I have no photo evidence to support this.
And, the no-such-thing-as-climate-change means that the winters up there today are much milder in terms of precipitation.
Comrade Kevin
Every time I see a story like this, I am reminded of the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch.
artem1s
@Jager:
man, that brings back memories. We used to find empty parking lots and do donuts in my friends Maverick and dodge the shopping carts that were left out over night. I’m sure it ruined the suspension.
I’ve often wondered if you can still do that with ABS. I credit my ability to drive in almost any amount of snow in a sub-compact Honda to pulling stupid driving tricks while a teenager and also.too.knowing how to drive a stick.
gbear
@mistermix:
I remember a drive from Crookston MN down to Moorehead (across the river from Fargo ND) during my musician days. Blowing snow causing a total white out. We crawled the 70 miles by staying within sight of the car ahead of us (probably 3 car lengths) while the car behind us did the same. Then one of us looked up and noticed that the sky was blue and cloudless. The whole storm was taking place withing 12′ of the ground and it was all because of the wind blowing across open prairie.
We’re getting a pretty good rain here in the Twin Cities. I hate to think about how much snow this would be. In a day or so the temps are going to drop into the single digits. New Year’s Eve isn’t going to be pretty around here.
DJShay
@Comrade Kevin: LOL!
bemused
I thought the kids (late 20’s) were making a very large snowman. I was informed they are sculpting a snow beer bottle.
burnspbesq
Laettner wants to sync, but she doesn’t have the right port.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/burnspbesq/laettnerwantstosync.jpg
Ruckus
If anyone is left who thinks it doesn’t snow in CA remember one thing.
The Donner Party
And then I have a picture of winter in Mammoth in which you can see the car door that has been dug out and is open and the rest of the car is fully buried. With about 3-4 feet on top the car. This was winter 66. If I can find it and scan it, I’ll post it.
gbear
@bemused: I moved into my house a week before that cold snap. It was minus 40 in the Twin Cities for a couple days and I too remember how much of a relief it was when the temps got back up to minus 20. I remember the move-in day being so incredibly nice because it had stopped snowing, the sun had come out for a day and the temp was +10.
justawriter
Here are a few more pictures from the 1966 blizzard in North Dakota.
jharp
@HRA:
Megadittos.
Only I was in Ohio.
We had a tractor trailer buried in the snow (on a state highway) (Route 13) near Mansfield for 13 days. The dude ate snow to survive.
Schools were closed thurs, friday, and the entire next week.
Rosalita
@HRA:
I remember the Blizzard of ’77… snowed so much in CT that they shut the state down and our driveway was cleared by a friend with a pay-loader. Snow pile didn’t melt until May.
elmo
When I lived in snow country, for two years I lived in a two-story house with a partially above-ground basement (so really two-and-a-half stories). Starting in January, I could routinely go in and out of my second-floor bedroom window via the snow pile. This condition would persist until mid-May.
The house was ski-in and ski-out, and its front wall was all windows, floor to roof, facing the mountain. Which was a nice view. Except that the windows were all single-pane.
We used to put tomatoes and bananas in the refrigerator overnight to keep them from freezing on the countertops. We also had to knock ice off the dogs’ water dish every morning — indoors.
Damn, I miss Mammoth.
DJShay
Chuckles just needs to quit twitter. Period.
elmo
@Ruckus:
Heh. February of 1998 we got 14 feet of snow; I have a pic of myself standing on the roof of a lifted Ford Explorer, after having dug down to get there.
Tom Hilton
@Ruckus: Tangentially, the Donner Camp site is now a picnic area, which by wingnut GZM standards is terribly insensitive.
Dave in ME
@HRA: That whacked the crap out of Cleveland when I was 5. We have some pics floating around somewhere of the garage barely visible from the back porch. That was a truly epic snowstorm!
mistermix
For the “it’s a fake” crowd, here’s the origin of the photo:
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/wea00958.htm
Clearly, a conspiracy between the North Dakota State Highway Dept and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration produced it.
Original Lee
I remember my dad talking about the March Blizzard of 1966. He was in graduate school about 100 miles away from home, he and my mom were newlyweds, and she was pregnant with my brother. So when the state police told the university to shut down, he had the choice of trying to find a place to stay in town, or driving home. Naturally, he chose to drive home. He rounded up 2 other graduate students who lived in the same general area, they all piled into the biggest car of the lot (not his), and proceeded to get on the highway. He said about 10 miles later, the snow was so thick they couldn’t tell where the road was, basically whiteout conditions, so the 2 who were not driving took turns rolling down their windows and sticking their heads out to see if they could find any landmarks. They ended up using the telephone poles and guesstimating the road based on how far away from the telephone poles they were. They left mid-afternoon, and they got pretty close by about 10 PM. My parents’ place was the closest to university, so they all went there, but they couldn’t even drive all the way. They had to abandon the car about half a mile down the road because of the drifts, and they tied themselves together with a scarf, and then they walked toward the lights my mom had left on for them. A real saga.
bemused
@gbear:
Tropical Minnesota…gotta love it.
MattR
Mine too. IN fact that could very well be him in the picture, though I am sure it is not. Not sure if it was this storm, but I have heard stories of them having to use sleds to transport peope from Carrington to the hospital in Jamestown.
@LGRooney:
And on the other side of the family, my grandfather left the Ukraine and ended up in Winnipeg. Not sure of exactly when, but I think it was closer to 1920.
Thankfully, mom and dad moved to the tropical NYC area before having kids.
peej
@Geeno: I got lucky during that storm in 77. I lived in the Syracuse area and went to college up at Potsdam. Of course, I had to go through the heart of the snow belt to get back and forth. I was going home that weekend on a Greyhound bus and got caught in the storm. We had dinner at the fire station in one of those little towns along the way to Watertown…then ended up staying overnight, in the bus, parked outside the bus station in Watertown (which was conveniently closed). Fortunately, the bus had enough fuel and there was a 24-hour donut shop next to where we were parked. The bus managed to get out of Watertown the next day…one of the few to do so. I almost ended up camped out at the armory for five days. The weird thing was that once we made it to Syracuse, there was no snow whatsoever. The wonders of lake-effect snow.
Gus
@Tom Hilton: I stand corrected, and I appreciate the correction.
bemused
The kids’ beer bottle sculpture is coming along. I think they just need to fit the aluminum pie tin on top for the cap. Must be thirsty work, I see a couple of glasses of beer sitting on the steps nearby.
General Stuck
Plus, it’s supposed to get to 13 degrees F tonight. This may be my last dispatch from the Stuck bunker until they pry my frozen hands of the keyboard. So mother nature may abruptly end my too often ravings on BJ, and bring relief to the pieing masses.
CaseyL
Buffalo winters! I remember reading news stories every year about the godawful Buffalo winters, back when I lived on the East Coast! It seemed everyone was snowed in up to the second story windows. I used to wonder how they got in and out of their houses without disappearing – they must have done as elmo said, used skis to stay on top of the snowpile.
I just returned home to Seattle from a month in Australia and New Zealand. It’s summer there, with temps in the mid to high 20s Celsius. I returned to temps in the high 20s- low 30s… Farenheit.
LGRooney
@MattR: Yeah, my mom’s family moved to MT when she was 12, then she went to college in WA, grad school in SF, and married a navy man, close to warm ports for nearly 60 years now.
elmo
@CaseyL:
Either that, or you shovel a lot while it’s still snowing. I’ve shoveled when I got home from work, again after dinner, again just before bed, and set my alarm for 2 am so I could get up and shovel some more, to keep the front door from being blocked in the morning.
The problem then becomes lifting the snow shovel high enough to dump it onto the snowbanks, so it doesn’t then just spill back down into the path you’re clearing.
burnspbesq
apropos of the topic, this is kinda neat: a time-lapse of the building of the hockey rink inside Heinz Field.
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=5964006
The weather forecast for Saturday in Pittsburgh is about as bad as it could be for an outdoor hockey game: rain and temps in the 50s.
Tom Hilton
@mistermix: Hey, if the governments of Kenya and Hawaii can conspire to fake a birth certificate, a NOAA/ND conspiracy isn’t implausible at all.
Betty Cracker
@HRA: My husband is from Buffalo and lived through that. Understandably, he moved to Florida eventually, where he met and married me. The family has to hear Blizzard of ’77 stories every time we bitch about the cold here. Hubby lived near a park where the plows deposited snow, creating a gigantic snow mountain that he claims did not melt completely until July.
Gus
@General Stuck: That’s 13 above zero, right? That’s not so bad.
elmo
@Betty Cracker:
Believe him. My snow storage mountain in Mammoth didn’t usually melt till then, either. And that was just for my little 4-plex’s parking lot.
Jager
@artem1s:
My ex-farm boy dad prepared me for winter driving by taking me out on field roads (mud) after big rainstorms. By learning to drive on, as he called them, “greasy” roads, I was well prepared for winter driving. That and having plenty of friends in the car to push it out of the snowbanks.
I used to borrow an old Ford F-1 pickup from my Grandfather’s farm in the winter. It had “knobby tires” on the rear, throw a shovel, three or four bags of sand in bed and that old flathead V-8 would go most anywhere and the fact it had a great heater was a plus. Even my stuck-up girlfriend learned to love the dark green F-1.
Jager
Anyone remember studded snow tires? Worked great but ruined the roads. I had them on my BMW 2002 Tii, front and rear. I was rolling down the Mass Pike one dry winter day and as I reached my cruisng speed of 85 I heard what sounded like someone shooting at the car…the studs were coming off the tires and drilling holes in the fender wells.
TheF79
@bemused: Having been to the bars in Tower, I can sympathize.
DJShay
@Jager: I remember snow chains on tires. But you don’t hear much about them these days. Or maybe it’s because I live in the south? We had a decent snow in Winston Salem NC one year when I was a kid and I remember having those chains on the tires. Does anyone still use them?
Suffern ACE
@DJShay: Chains also ruined the roads. In reality, the biggest switch came when cars moved from rear wheel drive to front and all wheel drive. Got rid of the need to up 50 pound salt bags in the trunk so that there would be traction.
MikeJ
@DJShay: Yep. We even have special areas to pull over and put them on when you get near the mountain passes. Not just Snoqualmie pass. Even for teeny tiny mountains. Tiger Mt has a tire chain lane and the summit is only ~1300ft.
Andy K
@DJShay:
They’re illegal here in snowy Michigan. They do too much damage to the roads.
And chains barely make a difference on snow, imo. On ice? Yeah, they’re helpful. But we experience snowy conditions here much more so than icy conditions.
Jager
@DJShay:
Don’t see too many chains here in So Cal, I’m sure the skiers have them tucked away, there was 17 inches of new snow at Big Bear in the past few days on top of what they got last week!
Mrs J who grew up in Batavia NY has a great “chains” story. When she was in high school, the snowbelt had a late season overnight snow storm. Daddy put chains on her car so she could get to school in the morning, by the end of the day, it had warmed up, the streets were clear and almost dry. She was ‘mortified” to have to drive home with the chains still on her Mustang.
DJShay
Thanks everyone. I was wondering whatever happened to them
Andy K
@Suffern ACE:
I forgot all about those! First car was a ’75 AMC Hornet wagon. IIRC, it took three bags to hold the tail in place.
DJShay
@Jager: I bet that made quite a racket!
elmo
@DJShay:
In California, there are three levels of chain control:
R-1 is chains or snow tires required.
R-2 is chains required on all non-4wd vehicles.
R-3 is chains required on ALL vehicles.
My CHP buddies advised me in the sternest possible terms that R-3 conditions really meant that I should stay the hell off the road no matter what was on my vehicle.
kindness
They threatened it but it does seem the front pagers have now thrown down the gauntlet & gone Galt on us.
Jager
@DJShay:
Yes, her Dad told me the old Mustang was never the same after about 12 miles with chains on a dry road. Her brother, who was a senior at the time, passed her on the way homeand just laughed! He said the sparks were flying off the chains.
kindness
re: driving in the snow.
It’s really odd. I grew up in the northern burbs of NY and while we always had a set of snow tires we would put on all the cars in October/November & take off in the spring, we never even thought about using chains. We didn’t have 4WD vehicles, we had station wagons. We never ever got stuck either. Went skiing in upstate, northern CT, & VT almost every weekend and no ill effects.
Here in CA, people seem to freak out at the least little drop of rain let alone snow. I have had chains for all the cars I’ve owned (still haven’t bumped up to 4WD….next pick up we get will be though) and it takes 2 hours to get to a place up the Sierra that normally takes 1. Go figure.
Still….I have to admit I like having to drive to the snow to play rather than shovel the shit.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
Your father was a mailman?
stuckinred
I wrote a long piece about being out in the field in Korea in 1968 when the NK’s came across the DMZ and, 5 days later, captured the Pueblo. The post vanished but the point was that is was cold as shit sleeping in tents in January on the 38th parallel.
MattR
@kindness:
Westchester? Rockland? I grew up in the latter and most of my friends now live in the former. And of course the guy hosting New Year’s is the one who lives the farthest north.
Alwhite
@gbear:
I made that drive once in a blizzard by opening the door & following the stripes when I could find them. That is a lovely trip when the wind is blowing – NOT
burnspbesq
I remember driving up Lee Highway from Fairfax to the district in the big snowstorm of January 2000 and laughing my fool head off at the idiots in big SUVs sliding over the curb. It’s just as easy to spin four wheels as it is to spin two if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Growing up in North Jersey and going to undergrad in Upstate NY, you learn winter driving skills, or else.
gene108
@Cris:
In the 20th Century sure…but we’re in the 21st Century
As long as your cell phone and someone else is charged, there’s no reason you can’t be at work.
If power’s not out, there’s no excuse to not be checking e-mails, sending e-mails, making calls and generally staying on top of things.
kindness
@MattR: Tarrytown. You know the Tappan Zee bridge? The town on the eastern side.
Alwhite
@DJShay:
I have a good friend who moved from MN to Louisville. The first winter there (it might have been ’77 but seems a bit later than than in my memory). They got a tremendous storm his first winter, the TV news said the state plan for snow removal was their ‘standard plan’ – wait for spring.
You would be ticketed for driving without chains for a time & he sold his set for $500 to a guy that owned the liquor store so he could make deliverys!
John - A Motley Moose
I was born on March 26, 1947 shortly after that bizzard. That storm hit Michigan too. My parents used to tell the story about my birth. My mother was crowded into a car with 5 men so they could push it out of the snow drifts on the way to the hospital. I’ve got a picture around here somewhere of snowdrifts covering the garage. The worst part of that storm was that it warmed up really quick afterward and caused some serious flooding in our area, which almost never has floods.
gbear
@gene108: Shhh!! Some of us are looking for reasons to put our life on hold. You’re ruining everything.
MattR
@kindness: Heh. I will probably be crashing after the NYE party with a buddy who lives in the high rise condos on Benedict Ave. A very convenient location if you have to commute into Manhattan. Much better than Rockland, especially now that Christie cancelled the tunnel project.
@gene108: Especially true when you normally work from home.
Tom Hilton
@gene108:
Yet another reason why cell phones should be banned.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
the telephone polls are really short in south dakota. they must have had a shortage of wood.
kindness
@MattR: I grew up two streets away from Benedict Ave. Small world. Yea, most the adults who worked in the city walked to the train station most the year as a kid. It’s nice. Get to Manhattan in half hour and do what ever.
Out where I live now….well, I’m in the middle between SF & Yosemite. About 1 1/2 hours to either. Yosemite is too crowded though. if I’m going into the mountains, I don’t want to get stuck in traffic jams. Stanislaus Natl Forest is much better Zen.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
Who knew that Rasmussen was running a softcore porn operation?
elmo
@kindness:
Little secret for you.
When 120 through Tioga Pass opens back up, go all the way through the park, out the other side, and to the Mobil gas station at the far end, just before you hit 395. There is a gourmet restaurant inside the gas station. The Whoa Nellie Deli.
Google it. You’ll see. You won’t be disappointed.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Tom Hilton: Cry me a river. I lived five years in Seattle.
Tom Hilton
@kindness: Let’s see…sounds like Modesto maybe? Or Merced?
You a backpacker? If so, there are plenty of places in Yosemite where you can avoid people altogether. Just stay away from Little Yosemite Valley and the High Sierra Camps & connecting trails, and you can lost most people. Especially if you stay off-trail as much as possible.
That said, Emigrant is also lovely, and relatively uncrowded. But my favorite part of the Sierra is Kings Canyon NP. Wild and spectacular, and I’ve done 9-day trips there where I never saw anyone between day 1 and day 9…
Tom Hilton
@elmo: Second the rec for the Whoa Nellie. Good stuff.
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Well, that’s exactly why I don’t live in Seattle: too much fucking rain. Which is really too bad, because on the rare occasions when it is clear, the view is spectacular.
Luthe
@gene108:
Nice theory, but doesn’t work if the power’s out you live in a cell dead zone.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Win!
Dave in ME
@Jager: I still use them here in the sticks of Maine. Makes a helluva a difference on the back roads, i.e. most of the state north of Portland…….
EnfantTerrible
My parents lived through the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940. It was an unbelievable experience that they remembered and talked about all their lives. I experienced some pretty intense weather growing up and living in Minnesota. One of my favorite memories is cross-country skiing to work during and immediately after a pair of dandy blizzards in the early 1980s. The first dropped 18″ and the second dropped another 16″ not two days later.
Uncle Omar
For HRA and DJShay
Isn’t that the storm that inspired JImmy Buffett to write
“I can’t go back to America soon,
It’s too damn cold and it’ll snow until June.
They’re freezing up in Buffalo and stuck in their cars
And I’m lyin’ here ‘neath the sun and the stars.”
Dave in ME
@Uncle Omar: Manana was a tune from Son of a Son of a Sailor.
JR in WV
I was in Colorado and Wyoming once between Memorial day and mid-June, and while we were in CO there was a storm with some snow but mostly wind and rain.
Two weeks later at a restored gold mine community in WY I asked if they got much snow, and she said they got 2 feet just the weeks before. All the buildings were 2 story and they all had doors to the outside on the 2nd floor. No steps, just a door, to walk out of when it snowed for real.
Later in flat country I asked a woman at a general store if they got much snow, and she said not really, they saw a lot on its way to South Dakota though.
Here in West Virginia we have real winter weather sometimes. Our gas freezes off sometimes if it gets to 25 or 30 below for a few days. Once we were without power or gas for a couple weeks, and the National Guard came in to dig us out with really big 12-wheel-drive graders. Well, it was a while ago, maybe it was 8 or 10 wheels, but more than the state road folks had.
There was a ice hole in the road that the Guard wouldn’t take a 6×6 truck through…
have driven on city streets with the parking meters under the snow, back when I had a 1971 Toyota Landcruiser. Made the wife nervous, though, even though there wasn’t any other traffic.
My wife is a retired reporter, and spent time with the Guard in a HumVee doing rescue, bringing old folks out of their country trailers, and they got stuck in the snow. The Guard didn’t waste time sending another HumVee to get stuck, they sent a monster front-end loader.
Here in Lincoln county that storm was rain, but in Beckley, 60 miles east and 2000 feet higher, it was 36 inches of snow, and then it rained- HARD. Krogers was crushed flat! The snow held the water on flat roofs, and near 200 buildings were mashed in Raleigh county.
This was a storm, but it was forecast, and getting caught out is silly. They should have been prepared, closed roads before the storm started, and enforced snow emergency rules. That’s what they’re for!
I have a big 4×4 truck to pull a backhoe with, and it’s pretty sweet in snow, up to 16 inches or so. It’s too heavy for mud, though. Sink to the bottom, stay there. So I’m pretty careful about creek crossings.
JR
ERNO ROSSI
White Death-Blizzard of ’77, book and DVD are on my website http://www.whitedeath.com along with classic pics of that major disaster. Enjoy and have a healthy new year.
Erno Rossi