Blizzards

We've just passed about two weeks without snow in Salt Lake City. December was snowy after November was anything but wintry, but now, most of the snow has melted, an inversion has set in, and there's no precipitation forecast until Friday while highs hover in the low 40s.

Not that I mind that much ...

Yeah, I've come to despise winter, even the relatively mild Salt Lake City winters that don't quite compare to January in the Midwest. This is our 22nd winter here, and though we've dealt with inversions since we arrived, the winters seem tamer and tamer as the years have gone by. Winter storms are fewer, and the snow melts quicker when it does hit. That's not so bad for me, but not so good for reservoirs and ski resorts.

That said, I think I strained my back after shoveling following the last winter storm, when we got about seven inches of snow. Earlier in December we got hit with about 14 inches. These are pretty significant snow events for here, given the drought and the climate adjustment in progress, but neither compared to the two blizzards that were unlike any other storms I've experienced in the past 51 years.

**********************

January 1979, Chicago

I was a third-grader at a time when snow days that canceled school were a present from God ... and rare. We'd probably get one a winter in Chicago if we were lucky. In 1979, we got really lucky.

The snow started falling on a Sunday night, and by Monday morning, more than two feet had fallen. The blizzard paralyzed the city. School was canceled that day, of course, but snowplows couldn't get to the major arterials, much less side streets.

My father shoveled, and shoveled, and shoveled the sidewalk as well as the street space in front of our house. The snow was piled high, maybe five feet, on the lawn -- high enough that we could sled down it. Mom was concerned we would slide into the street, but there weren't any cars driving by anyway. 

The snow day turned into a snow week. Teachers couldn't get to schools through the unplowed streets, and we got five days off, just a couple weeks after Christmas break. We lost a day off later in the spring to compensate, but the St. Eugene's third grade used that day for a field trip. 

The city's snow response was so bad that the mayor wasn't re-elected in March. The snow wouldn't fully melt until mid-March. Another blizzard wouldn't top that in my mind, until ...

***********************

December 2003, Salt Lake City

I took three weeks of paternity leave after Michael was born but volunteered to work Christmas night so someone else already covering for me could get the holiday off. Christmas was always a slow night in the newsroom. and I got out a little earlier to snowy streets.

I took my time driving home through the city. The streets were mostly empty, and though the driving was slow, there was a certain beauty to the urban snow that I hadn't experienced in three years of living in the suburbs. It seemed so idyllic: new child, new home in the city, and this perfectly calm and serene snowfall.

The serenity wouldn't last. Over the next 36 hours or snow, our neighborhood got about 23 inches of lake effect snow. This was one of those snowfalls in which you shoveled one part of your property, got to the next, only to have to need to shovel the first part again. I never owned a house with a driveway before and experienced shoveling about three times more space than I ever had before. 

The snow was so heavy -- that also was a new thing for me. We lost one branch off our linden, and I was throwing a football high into the tree to try to shake off more snow to places a long stick wouldn't reach. I was exhausted. Lori, not minding a little outside time, switched duties and I came inside, but I wasn't going to let her because I worried our new neighbors would think I was making my postpartum wife do physical work less than three weeks after giving birth.

We haven't had a storm like that since. The 14-inch storm last month might have been as close as that blizzard, but that wasn't even as daunting as 2003. And the snow melted, then another storm barreled through, then melted again.

I can remember a few snowstorms through the years that were impressive -- the April blizzard in Chicago in 1982, Milwaukee in 1994 when a snowplow buried Lori's car, the Madison blizzard in 1999 that hammered Chicago a lot worse. But these are the two that were truly unforgettable. I'm not in a rush to add to the list.

And, I'm beginning to think that a snowblower might not be a bad investment.