SnOMG!!!

It finally stopped here. We got around 18 inches and one of the darned snowplows knocked over our mailbox. I gettin' ready to go shovel, since apparently I'm the only one in my house that's physically capable of it.

18 inches here in Western PA so far, and very heavy, wet snow it is. A lot of branches have come down, and a pine tree in our back yard snapped in half. It looks just like the pictures from Mousedroid.

Around here we have "yinz", which I think comes from "you ones" and is another sort of second person plural. I don't use it but I like it. It never would have occurred to me to call it a Lovecraftian word. You mean because of the spelling? It's not exactly "cthonic".

I agree that modern English can get by without an explicit second person plural, but that's no reason to ban them. If I remember correctly, Old English had not only a plural second person pronoun, but there was even a different form to distinguish dual from plural. Languages evolve, English more than most.

There was 16.5" in the middle of my front yard, and a 31" high snow drift in my side yard today.

I rarely miss the winters yunz (my spelling) have back in western PA. I'm originally from Johnstown and remember one year when we got 26" of snow and my boss called to find out why I wasn't at work.

Funny story...

I take care of a little grey feral cat (because she's the mother of my inside cats). She isn't tame, and lives outside 100% of the time, but I was worried about her with this storm coming. My back porch is screened in and every winter I put plastic up over the screens. With space heaters running back there, it stays a comfy 45-55 degrees, eve if it's only 10 degrees outside.

So last night I trapped "Shadowcat" back there to keep her warm and safe. There is a kitty door in the one screen door, but I can lock it to prevent her from leaving, which I did. Normally she's OK sleeping back there in the evening, but leaves in the middle of the night if I don't lock her door.

This morning she was safe and warm, but very grumpy. I unlocked the little kitty door and pushed it open to show her it was blocked by a two foot high snow drift. I checked on her throughout the morning, and she was fine, but this afternoon I took a nap and when I went to check on her again an hour ago, she was gone. She had pushed open the unlocked kitty door and tunneled out! But I couldn't see anywhere that the tunnel emerged from the snow.

Fearing the worst I grabbed my shovel and went around the house to shovel out my patio. This is what I found:

My patio as it looked before I started shoveling:







The escape route discovered:








She couldn't have gotten too far:






Turns out she just tunneled under my tool shed, where she has nested in the past, including when she had the two kittens I adopted. She's probably the most resiliant little 8 pound cat in the world, so I'm guessing she is safe. Hopefully she'll come in on the porch again tonight when she gets hungry.

Hope your kitty is all right, Mousedroid.

Story time! My mom once spent two years as an innkeeper, and had a feral cat living under the inn. The cat was polydactylic -- she had six toes on her front paws. She was very skittish and impossible to catch.

One day she started to get very fat, and we knew she must be pregnant. She'd never been spayed, never been to a vet at all, never been captured. She had the litter of kittens...somewhere under the inn, we guess; never found out where she was keeping them. All my mom could do was put out extra food.

Eventually my mom's time as innkeeper came to an end, and the corporate interests that owned the place seemed unlikely to be interested in the welfare of one feral cat with a new litter. We were wondering about her fate.

I went to help my mom pack up her stuff and carry it to the rental truck. While we worked, the mama cat appeared and watched us. She was clearly still nursing the kittens at this point.

"Little cat, we're leaving," my mom said. "If you want to come with us, get your kittens now."

A few minutes later, mama cat reappeared -- holding a tiny kitten in her mouth. She marched over to one of the open cardboard boxes and set the kitten inside! She made three more trips, setting four mewling kittens in the box, and then stood still, tail thrashing in distaste, and permitted herself to be picked up for the first time ever!

I swear this story is true -- I was there and saw it myself.

The multi-toed kitty family lived with my mom for many years, and eventually became pettable. I house-sat for her one week in a very cold January, and in the middle of the night the shy kitties crept up to me and curled up against my warmth.

Back on-topic, I have some photos of yesterdays' snow in my area west of Washington, DC. We got 29.79 inches, breaking the all-time 2-day snowfall record by a solid 5 inches. Among other things, an emergency vehicle got stuck in our driveway (they were coming because, as in all good disaster movies, a woman went into labor!), a Bobcat snow-removal vehicle became trapped, and our association's snow blower burned out its motor.

Oh, and a tree fell.

This is some snow.

I live in a condo in a college town,my neighbors are all quiet families,mostly retirees.
Anyways across the way is a double condo they rent out,last year they decided to rent to college kids.

Now as you very well know college kids for the most part are annoying,loud,pigs who think it is party time whenever they like and damned be the neighbors.

Anywho when we got buried yesterday,the one college kids car was buried,so instead of trying to clear the snow off of the car and around the car,he decides to just jump in and tries to drive off.Mind you there is only a small patch that he wiped off the windshield so he could see,the rest of the car has like 12-15 inches of snow on it and is surrounded by 20" of snow.

So for the next 32 minutes I get to listen to this moron revving his engine trying to get out of his drive way.The snow being as deep as it is so compacted beneath the car that he can't move.
Now instead of trying to correct his lack of common sense and just a get a shovel and dig his way out.The moron gets out of the car and starts kicking snow out of the way from his tires,the good part of this is that he was wearing flip-flops......

Twenty minutes later he finally got his car out after rocking it back and forth enough to "plow" the snow with his car out of the way.So he goes driving off,his car looking like a iceberg driving down the road.

Finally he came home late last night and couldn't make it in his driveway,so he backed up and got a headstart now his car slide in the driveway and is in the yard buried worse than it was.Sigh....

How many times did the bunny hit his head?

Presenting the Snownicorn!







I put some more photos in the set.

I swear this is what the last 2 days have felt like:



For those of you who, like me, may have been bemoaning your wintry fate, the above picture is from a Russian hydroelectric dam. They had an explosion earlier in the year, and now winter has set in. Russian winter, on a malfunctioning dam.

Yeah, I'll be shutting up now about my miserable couple of feet of snow.

The rest of the pics of this dam

I guess I have to take it back. We have a foot of snow over here, and I have not seen this much in over 10 years. Huh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Northern Virginia is still digging out from this all-time record snowfall (29.79 inches where I live; 32 inches at nearby Dulles Airport)...and now we have another storm coming, starting tomorrow possibly as early as noon. 10-20 more inches expected!!! The mind boggles.

Public and parochial schools were closed here today, but my workplace wasn't .

A second storm is slated to hit Philadelphia tomorrow evening and last well into Wednesday. And it's expected to be just as bad as the one that hit this weekend .

Here in Ohio had a couple days to breath and digout,now more snow on the way....

I saw D.C on the weather network channel the other day. the reporter said something like "For those of you in Canada that are wondering what the big deal is..." I lol'd. It really did look like a run-of-the-mill day in my hometown. Good luck all the same guys, safe driving.

The melting snow collected into icicles that tore off about 30 feet my gutter.

http://twitter.com/cheezcakejunkie/status/8863488727

On top of that, I went two days without hot water and finally was able to take a real shower this morning.

@SpaceNut - My 50s, AE arcs and current projects at ParagonWiki