Chicagoland's Blizzard of 2011

Forecasters had been predicting this storm for days.  They said it would begin at 3:00 pm on Tuesday and would last for almost 24 hours.  The predicted amounts of snowfall ranged from 8" to close to 30".  The school districts here actually cancelled Wednesday classes early Tuesday afternoon.  Our office had already made the decision to close Wednesday.  As we were trying to close up the office Rob called to say it was starting to get bad outside and I should hit the road.  It normally takes me seven minutes to get to work in the morning (because there isn't traffic to deal with).  It took me forty minutes to get home yesterday and I left the office at 3:10.  I'm not complaining though because anyone who had to commute from the city had it really bad.  It's 24 hours later and the city still doesn't have all the vehicles that were left stranded on Lake Shore Drive cleared out (hundreds of drivers were stuck in their cars and on buses through the storm - hmmm, Nightline is saying close to a thousand cars were just abandoned on Lake Shore Drive).

Boy, the computer models were right on the nose with this storm.  It ended up as the third worst storm in Chicago's (recorded) history.  I don't know exactly how much snow we got here because every town, city and suburb recorded a different amount.  I know North Aurora recorded just over 19" and that's the closest to where we live.  The official total at O'Hare was 20.2".  The crazy wind created all kinds of drifts so in one spot in our yard we had well over four feet of snow, but on our back deck we had no snow at all.  We sat in the family room last night with the fireplace roaring listening to the wind howl.

I love how still and quiet the world is after a heavy snow.  Until it's time to get the snowblower out of the garage.

Our neighbor, Chris Nielsen, who lives at the end of the street has a MONSTER snowblower so he just worked his way through the neighborhood.  He plowed through all the sidewalks and was heading up to plow us out just as Rob finished up his morning phone calls and was getting ready to start up his snowblower.  It was actually nice to have his help because the drifts were deeper up close to the garage.

This picture cracks me up.  Chris was taking on the snow in his shorts and gym shoes.

You can see how deep the drifts were by comparing them to the snowblowers. 
Unfortunately the guys were shooting all the snow right at where our front walk is supposed to be.

The blizzard didn't actually last 24 hours, so that's the only thing the forecasters didn't get right.  I'm glad it didn't last that long.  The wind had slowed down by the time we woke up. It was nice to have sun and blue skies.  It made everything look so beautiful, fresh and clean.  Since our driveway faces south, having the sun shine helps keep our drive free of ice when the temperatures drop (as they invariably will).

The city snowplow actually came through about 2:30 which was pretty surprising.  We didn't expect them till much later.  The nice thing about them coming through early is that Rob was able to go back out to plow through the "backwash" the plow leaves at the side of everyone's driveway.

Rob made it through the plow's "backwash" at the end of the driveway and then he got to work digging out the 4-1/2 foot drift that was sitting right on top of our front walk.  It's fun having a little snow tunnel.  Wish we had some cute little kids, or even silly teens to play in all this wonderful snow. 

We were lucky, the only complication we ended up with is a broken clutch on our baby snowblower.  It just couldn't handle all the heavy snow.  But I'm still glad we had it and Rob didn't have to shovel.