Milwaukee just got hit with a blizzard Tuesday night. It was the second of two winter storms in just two days. One came on Monday and was just a normal winter storm. The second was something I haven't really experience, at least not in a very long time. The first storm was really small and only snowed about an inch. It came during rush hour so people were frustrated in Milwaukee, that was just the start. The second wave was predicted to start at about 3 pm on Tuesday. The wind came earlier but really the snow didn't come until about 5 and when it came it wouldn't stop. Holly and I registered for a yoga class together and Tuesday was supposed to be the first night. The class got canceled around noon. That how bad they were thinking the storm was going to be. Since there wasn't any yoga, Holly and I spent the night playing with our bunny Dexter and actually watching the show Dexter. We made pizza and spent the night indoors and that was our night. The storm was pretty violent because of the winds that came with it. The wind was blowing about 40 mph and gusts more than 60. It made the big window in our apartment rattle all night. We went to bed early because I had to work on Wednesday. That is when the problem started.
Like I said, it was the start of the problems. I woke up plenty early so I would have enough time to make it to work. That is what I thought anyways. I got all dressed almost like I was going snowboarding. I went out to my car and this is what it looked like. It wasn't covered that much with snow because of the winds. The winds drifted snow all over. I was scheduled to open and our street had not been plowed yet . We normally open at 5 am which means we have to be there at 4:30. They planned on us opening at 6 instead of 5. Not much help in my mind. It is like giving someone a penny and hoping that would make them rich. Oh well. Before calling my boss I tried to move my car. The snow on the street was over a foot and I actually got my car moving but couldn't get my small Jetta onto the street through the knee high snow.
This is part of the reason that our street had not been plowed. If you look closely you can see a car in the middle of the picture. It is a car that was trying to parallel park somewhere in the night and their car stopped working or it just got stuck. They just left it in the middle of the street. So DUMB. It created so many problems all day!
See that is where they left their car. It pretty much blocks the whole street. No plows.
This is probably the best picture I have of the "white out" conditions. The wind was blowing so much it made the snow look like it was going sideways, sometimes even upwards. Crazy. I think the only other official blizzard I was in was the Halloween Blizzard of '91. I don't remember the wind back then though.
After I tried to move my car I called my boss and said that there was no way of moving my car. He called our district manager and decide it would be in our best interest to wait to open the store until 10am. I made some coffee at home, put in a movie, and took a small nap with Holly on the couch. I got up and checked on the snow. It had stopped around 9am but that didn't mean that I could go to work. Here is a picture of some of the drifts. See the snow on the fence.
Here's Jetta (aka Rusty) Not covered with that much now but the drifts are crazy. If you look right in front of my car there is a shoveled snow pile and the adjacent one is by the tree. Across the driveway is a snow drift the height of those piles which was probably around waist high.
Here is that dumb car again. Still in the same spot at 10am which means no plow all the way through the street.
This is my car. I got lucky where I parked it because the drifts didn't really pile up around it. I didn't even have to brush it off!
This was the car behind mine. There is a pretty big difference in the drifts between our cars.
Finally a plow came by around 11am. It was not even a city plow. The father of the dumb girl who left her car in the street, owned a truck with a plow attached. He came to help her with her car and plowed part of our street. I think he owed us that. After this I had to shovel for maybe three minutes and was able to get my car out. I was lucky unlike some other people on our block who had to shovel for hours. This was around 11am when my boss called. I told him that I got my car out but my scheduled shift was supposed to be done at 1pm. Did it really make sense to go in? I could have gotten there but I was most likely the only one. He couldn't even get out of his driveway. Again he called the district manager and decided to try for noon. He called back a bit later and said we were just going to stay closed. None of the other employees could make it and at what point are you going to be spending more money then you are making. Its just coffee, people will live on without it. So we stayed closed and I got the day off. Holly already had been given Wednesday off so we stayed in the apartment all day together.
Here is by our back door. Again, the drifts were just ridiculous.
This is the door going to our basement garage. Not going down there this way anytime soon.
This is probably just the best picture of the snow drifts that I got. It goes half way up the back door to our place.
Overall, it was a crazy storm. They reported we got about 18 inches of snow in the 3 days of the storm. That is a lot of freaking snow but combined with the winds created a mess all over Milwaukee. It was a fun experience. Also, if you were wondering, the dumb car finally got moved around 6pm on Wednesday. It meant that our block missed one whole day of plowing.
