Tales from the Trenches: Caught by surprise.



My driveway when I got home tonight.

Grant you, it could be much worse.  They are predicting an inch an hour and my husband and daughter are out navigating the roads home from visiting the Columbus Zoo. 

If either one of us knew this was going to happen today, they would have never gone.

Hubs is very good.  He checks the weather and did check the radar before he left.  He said that he saw nothing, so saw it fit to proceed.  He left the zoo and called me at about 4:45 PM to say that he thought he was in a blizzard.  At 6:45 PM, he called to say that he had reached a destination about 40 minutes away (on a good day) and he was going to take an alternate route, because he was convinced that the expressway had been closed.

He has not seen a plow truck on his entire drive thus far.

I'm expecting an 8 - 8:30 PM arrival home for my two weary travelers.  A trip to Columbus takes about 1/3 of that time for us on a good day and with me driving.  (I have a bit of a heavy foot.)

Here's what the National Weather Service has to say about us:

556 PM EST MON FEB 21 2011


...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 AM EST TUESDAY...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CLEVELAND HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR SNOW...WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 AM EST TUESDAY. THE WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.

SNOW WILL BE MODERATE TO HEAVY FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE
EVENING...BECOMING LIGHTER OVERNIGHT. SNOWFALL RATES COULD EXCEED AN INCH PER HOUR THIS EVENING. STORM TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS THROUGH TUESDAY MORNING WILL BE 4 TO 8 INCHES. SNOW WILL DRASTICALLY REDUCE VISIBILITY AND MAKE FOR HAZARDOUS DRIVING CONDITIONS TONIGHT.

NORTHEAST WINDS OF 10 TO 20 MPH WITH OCCASIONAL HIGHER GUSTS WILL ACCOMPANY THE SNOW AND CAUSE SOME BLOWING AND DRIFTING.

See? I knew that taste of spring thing was too good to be true. With our winter, one could only hope that it was a sign of permanent warmness.  Uh, no.

Smiles in my day:
-  K- and I whipped together a Death by Chocolate cake this AM to help celebrate the President's birthdays. 
-  My people are safely driving home and Hubs is taking his time. 
-  Heat.  How many people out there don't have shelter during the snowstorms?  There are a fair number of homeless in the city. 

Stay warm.

ETA:  My people made it home in just slightly under 4 hours for the same drive it took them 2 hours to do this AM.  (I make it in less time.)  Hubs reports that the weather that he checked was Sunday's newspaper.  I told him that was off Saturday's report.  He said, "They can't be that far off, can they?"  "They can, but this time you needed to check something more current."  Though I will back him by saying that I didn't expect this either and I watch the news (often multi-tasking) and read the paper.  Everyone is safe.  If I were to bet, I'm thinking that K- will not have school tomorrow.  There has been little to no snow clearing here and the roads are atrocious.