Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Snowed In

We had a HUGE storm hit Pittsburgh last weekend. It started at 12pm on Friday, February 5th and ended at 24 hours later.  It didn't seem like much as it was coming down, but I guess it was persistent and did some damage.  We got 24 inches of snow - more snow than I've ever seen (off a mountain).

Can you find Danny's car?

There it is!

Our power went out at 1am Saturday morning because the snow was so heavy it was breaking all the old trees in our neighborhood.

I kept expecting it to come on at anytime throughout the day but I waited in vain.  We heard that the power probably wouldn't come on until Monday and possible not until the next Friday.  The good thing about losing power in the winter is that we could throw all our food from our fridge and freezer out into the snow and it was just fine.


However, we were too scared to drink our milk after it froze solid.
 

We had a hard time getting it out to the back porch though because this was as far as we could open our back door.

Danny spent 1 1/2 hours out shoveling the snow off our front walkway and some of our huge driveway. I felt so bad I borrowed our neighbor's shovel and came out as reinforcements for the next 1 1/2 hours.  It was the first time I've ever shoveled snow before.


Our house was FREEZING all that day.  We have gas heat but I guess its run by electricity, plus our stove is electric, and we have no fireplace.  You don't think about all the things you can't do with out electricity.  No internet - and all that implies, no TV, no power to charge your computer, no space heaters.  We spent the day bundled up under a blanket together while Danny studied and I wrote letters.  We tried to leave our house to go get food for dinner.  We tried 7 different restaurants before we found some place open.  The snow had stopped for 5 hours by this time but the roads had barely been touched.  We were sliding all over the place and got stuck a couple times.  Once we couldn't get out on our own and 3 guys had to come over to push us out.  Another problem is that we live in a bowl.  All the roads in our neighborhood are steep hills that go down to our house.  We were thanking our lucky stars to get home unharmed and we didn't feel like venturing out again.  Our friends heard that we were stranded and came to rescue us with their truck.  They let us stay in their warm home for the night and then brought us back again in the morning (after fixing us a delicious breakfast).  Luckily our power had come back Sunday morning, though it was off and on again all day.  Our make shift freezer worked, and our ice cream was still good!

I thought things would get back to normal, but it took them days to clear the roads off, and still, more than a week later the roads are still a bit scary.  Church was canceled (the first time I've ever experienced that) and school was canceled for FOUR DAYS!  Every night I would get a call letting me know there was no school the next day.  I was going crazy trapped inside for a whole week.  I got out once to go to a friends for lunch - thank goodness.  Finally on Friday I was able to go to work, but there was a 2 hour delay, and the whole day was pretty much a big Valentines day party, so it was a pretty easy week.  Danny's school said if he didn't feel like he could make it in each day he could call off, but the stalwart trooper drove 45 minutes down to the hospital in Washington everyday.  We got a little more snow throughout the week, but it didn't seem like that big of a deal anymore compared to what we just went through.  They said 160,000 homes in the Pittsburgh area lost power, and I've heard of people who still don't have power over a week later.  Pittsburgh was not prepared for this snow!  Now everyone has huge icicles growing on their houses.  They are getting so heavy that they are breaking the gutters off of some houses.  Check out our monster icicle.

Remember when we were in our bathing suits a month ago?


















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