The truth about snow

I come up with lots of good ideas for blog posts while I'm driving. If I could invent a device that would capture my thoughts as I have them I'd be a gajillionaire. I'd have so much money that I wouldn't have to work...or blog, I guess...anymore. *sigh*

So I was thinking to myself as I drove through the snowy streets on Friday night that what I take for granted as being a "given" with regard to snow may be completely unknown by some of my bloggie friends to the south. Even if you live in a place that gets snow, well, its a completely different ball game in places like Wisconsin or Minnesota that get FEET of snow at any given time.

This was the view of my car out the back door Friday morning, around 10 am:

One of the biggest problems when you get a crapload of snow like we just did ("crapload" being defined as a single snowfall equalling 10 or more inches - its a scientific measurement - didn't you know?) is that once its all fallen, you have to clean it up.

Well, duh, you say. But think about it. Let's say you have a driveway that's 10' wide by 80' long. (That'd be one narrow driveway, but go with me here.) You'd have 800 square feet of driveway. If you get a foot of snow, that means you have 800 cubic feet of snow to scoop up and move...someplace else.

That's enough snow to nearly fill an entire room in my house. (And by fill I mean to the ceiling.)

Once your driveway is cleared, that snow then makes banks, along the driveway and street, so high that you cannot safely see traffic to actually leave your driveway.

Oh, and don't forget the plow! Oh yeah...when the lovely city finally gets around to clearing the side streets, they'll take all the snow in the street and push it back up into the driveway that was just cleared.*

So if you do head out into the street that you can't see, you best be in four wheel drive or be going as fast as humanly possible, or you just might get stuck in that pile of snow between the banks at the end of your driveway. (I'd laugh, but it happened to me back when I owned my Saturn. The banks were so high that year that I actually couldn't physically open the door to get out. I had to push on the passenger side door with my feet for quite awhile before making an opening large enough to squeeze through! I'll never not own a four-wheel drive vehicle ever again.)

Then, let's say you head to the mall. Not only are the parking lots packed with morons people just like you doing their last-minute Christmas shopping, but that lot is much smaller than it usually is and some isles just...end...at a large, 20' high pile of snow**, forcing you to turn around in incredibly narrow parking lanes. Finally, after nearly 30 minutes of driving in the endless "parade" of morons cars circling the lot, you might just be lucky enough to make your own spot if you have four wheel drive.

I kick myself for not having a camera with me, but I foresee a post in the near future with photographic evidence of "creative parking". People who drive PT Cruisers pulled half-way up the side of snowbanks and Mini Coopers buried past the bumper. Obviously they won't be moving until spring. I, on the other hand, drove half out into boonie land and just stopped - the parking lot at the mall I went to butts up against the lot of a hotel and neither plow the section in the middle. I walked half a mile to the mall, but I swear I saw a familiar car still circling as I left a few hours later.

So, yes, its pretty. It makes things look peaceful, even. And yeah, we'll have a white Christmas. But trust me - it ain't all its cracked up to be!

*Not on purpose. They plow from one end of the street to the other, but snow gets left behind as it gets pushed.
**They bring in front-end loaders to pile the stuff at the corners of the parking lot. Every year, there's news footage when the last pile of the city melts, sometime in May or June. No lie.