http://www.wgntv.com/weather/chibrknews-lake-shore-drive-closed-due-to-blizzard-20110201,0,1675125.story

Wholly Bovine!

That picture says it all - excellent photo!

That kind of snow drifts you see in the picture (with all those funky shapes and cavities) can get surprisingly hard if the wind blows hard and long enough. Usually, you can forget about smashing through them with a vehicle - but it takes quite a bit of blowing to make them hard enough to walk on.


Oh, and in those conditions extremely fine powdered snow will make its way into every possible and some impossible openings. Pop the hood of any of those vehicles and you'll find a block of snow with an engine inside. That needs to get cleared out before you go anywhere.

Snow is amazing stuff.

I like the people that try to blast threw snow Mounds made by the plows that run infronta their driveways. They always get stuck and often tear their plastic bumper off.

Hmmmm..... I wonder how many of those people, in retrospect, thought that particular trip was really important?

"Many of those motorists have blamed the city for failing to close the drive and said there appeared to be no organized rescue plan."

There was a blizzard coming, everyone knew it, and yet they kept driving.

Sue

I'm impressed that the FD had snowmobiles. Do they have a winter racing team or something?

Folks are occasionally rescued from their cars during winter around here. It's not what you and your car can do, it's the accident somewhere in front of you that will create the stoppage. All it takes is ONE. (I hear this on my scanner a lot).

I was impressed that someone left there trucks windows down and the storm well left them a presant. That is a car that will be totaled when the show starts to melt.

Looking at the pictures of some of the higways I was impressed that I didn't even see ways to get around even if you had a truck or SUV that could deal with the snow depths. So even if you were prepaired and able to move, uness you had "Bigfoot" or "Gravedigger" you wernt' going anywhere.

Wow, that snow depth is insane.



I do that everyday in my jeep.

But NEVER when I borrow my parents' civic.

All it takes is some obstacle that creates less wind on the leeward side and you'll have a big snow bank right there. Just a slight depression so the wind isn't blowing as hard as everywhere else and the snow will accumulate.

It doesn't take much precipitation - the wind will collect it and basically dump it all in one place, right where you don't want it.

I read somewhere that the FD rented 200 of them (on a no bid basis of course) from a politically connected source at an insane price. But, that is about the only way anything happens in Chicago.

The same place reported the real problem was not the snow but that lake water was being blown up on LSD creating ice that actually led to the accidents that closed it down.

If you own snow mobiles, you may consider contacting your local emergency management office. They may like to have volunteers that would be willing to help out. Especially in areas where severe winter weather does not occur more than a few days on average over a few years.

Most places won't do this, but at least if you're part of emergency response before hand, it is really unlikely your equipment could be "borrowed" (with "just" compensation ) during a local state of emergency.

The first California Poppy has bloomed in our backyard - spring is no longer just a wild rumor...Hang in there.

We're supposed to have mid-day temps around -4 tomorrow so some coworkers and I are going outside to enjoy lunch and a stogie.

Best to keep them out of site so they don't get "borrowed" if that bothers you any.

Nobody is coming for your snowmobile.
Nobody is coming for your duck decoys.
Nobody is coming to take your {insert treasured object here} in a snowstorm.

If you have stuff that might be useful in an emergency, you have likely already been contacted and are already on an emergency plan somewhere. If you're not and you want to be, a letter to your municipality might be in order. they would welcome it.

In my planning book, I have arrangements with a lot of people. As a result, I have 10 backhoes, 8 dump trucks, 20 ATV's, 10 boats, at least 1 20 ton crane, 100 portable toilets, 5 generators, a complete portable kitchen, three sources for propane, diesel and gasoline, 8 ham radio operators and a notebook full of other stuff...all preplanned and redundant for a postage-stamp sized bit of Northeast PA. I'm just a volunteer Emergency Management Coordinator. The professionals are far better equipped than me. If we need more help, we'll ask, no question about it, but the reality is that part of your planning process is letting human beings act as human beings - and right here in PA, when Interstate 78 closed with similar winter weather, trapping people on the road for 3 days, the locals came out on snowmobiles, without central management directing them, and brought food, water, fuel and sanitation equipment to the folks trapped on the road.

This is true. We have snowmobiles, plows, and a bunch of wheel loaders. If the town our shop is located in needs extra assistance, they'll call us up and ask if we can help out. Generally, the arrangement is that we clear our buildings first and then we'll come out and help the town after we get in some sleep if they decide they need us.

Last major storm, it took us about 15 straight hours to get our stuff clear, then we got a few hours sleep, and went out to help the town. Typically their plows can move the snow into big piles on the side of the road, they just need us to come around with the loaders and help move the piles onto lawns and such. All in all, it was a solid three days before we got the town back to some semblance of normalcy.

I can't really ever see them commandeering our equipment. Typically, the biggest problem around here isn't that they don't have enough equipment....what they are usually lacking is enough qualified operators. Just like everybody else, sometimes the guys that drive the plows have trouble getting into work. Then you can only plow for so many hours before you need to get some sleep, at that point you're either shutting everything down until the next day or replacing your entire crew.

People need to realize that emergency workers aren't magicians. A major snowfall causes a lot of the same problems for us that it does for everyone else. In fact, often times we have the exact same problems, just on a larger scale...(You've got your car stuck in front of your neighbors house? Great, I'll be right over to help after I get my 17 ton loader out that's stuck down in a ditch.) One can only do so much at a time and certain things simply take precedence.