Around 8PM last night, possibly a little earlier, the university closed down for today. Completely. They were wasting no time. This was interesting to me, because at that point in time we were sort of in the lull between waves. Everything that had moved through yesterday had gone, and we weren't getting anything but some flurries around the area and the occasional squall. I talked to Parker for a bit on Facebook and Twitter around 10:30 or so, and nothing else had moved into the area down there yet either.
By around 11 or so, it began snowing consistently here in Newton. At first it was light, blowing, flurry-like activity, and then quickly picked up -- as I was talking to Daisy, it became a mostly silent, crazy blizzard once more with white-out conditions. Yet, it once more tapered off for a while, and by the time I went to bed around 1:30, we'd maybe picked up an inch of additional accumulation, if that. My footprints down the driveway to check the mail yesterday afternoon were still easily visible, and the cars across the street were once more covered, but lightly.
"Well," I told the cats as I went to bed (because, yes, I talk to them), "If it's coming, it's taking its time, but I don't care since they've already closed campus tomorrow and I canceled my classes before that. Looks like I get to stay warm and comfy with you little shits."
In response, Pete lovingly headbutted me in the face and laid down under the covers next to me like a teddy bear, and I went to sleep.
I awoke a little after 9AM. The snow outside lit up the room from the window like sunlight enough to the point where, for a few moments, I actually thought it was sunlight and that the storm had completely blown over. Again, it didn't matter to me either way, since campus had already been closed and I didn't have to go anywhere. I got up and trudged over to the big window at the front of my bedroom, lifted the curtain back, and looked outside.
Holy hell.
It had not "blown over," by any stretch of the imagination -- but for the time, it had stopped snowing. In the hours I was asleep, close to a foot of snow had fallen. The road was undisturbed; nobody in my neighborhood had attempted to get out, and there was a good 14" or so on the ground, give or take. I couldn't get a great view of all of it from the ground level, so I got dressed and came upstairs so that I could look at it more easily out of the front picture window in the living room:
My mailbox, in the center of the picture, is about three feet off the street level, if not a bit more -- it comes up to my mid-torso when I'm standing on the street. This leads me to believe that, without going outside to measure it myself, there's about 14-16" of snow on the ground at my house. The neighbors' mailbox across the street isn't buried so deeply because it's positioned different at the end of their driveway. Mine's sunk into the grass at the end of my yard.
I haven't had the television on at all, but I've been reading Facebook, and by all accounts it's just as bad in Wichita. People are getting into car accidents, and when ambulances are dispatched to help them, the ambulances have gotten stuck. Nearly everything's closed, save for gas stations, some grocery stores, and Walmart. Friends in the Kansas City area (four hours northeast of here) have been posting pictures on Twitter of multiple-car, nasty accidents on the interstates, enough to where some of the said interstates have shut down. CNN posted a video filmed on the campus of the university here, right next to my building, of thunder and lightning with the blizzard-like snow as it fell last night. Yeah, CNN reporters were at my school to film the craziness. Yeah, basically, it's nuts out there from everything I've read and heard from friends and colleagues.
Mind you, this is for a little more than a foot of snow. When this happens back home in West Virginia, yeah, it sucks, but for the most part life carries on as normal.
And again, I'll remind you that it was over seventy degrees here four days ago.
I'm sure there's already a betting pool on whether or not the university will close down again tomorrow -- many school districts out here closed down for tomorrow before noon today. Apparently it's not supposed to stop snowing in most areas until much later this evening, though it's not doing anything here right now (it was earlier, for a bit). Here's the latest NWS update:
A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM CST THIS EVENING.
* TIMING... PERIODS OF MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOW WILL CONTINUE TO SPREAD NORTHEAST ACROSS THE REGION TODAY... MIXING WITH SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN OVER FAR SOUTHERN AND SOUTHEAST KANSAS.
* SNOW AND SLEET ACCUMULATION... WILL RANGE FROM 2 TO 6 INCHES IN SOUTHEAST KANSAS... TO 9 TO 14 INCHES OVER SOUTH-CENTRAL KANSAS... TO 14 TO 18 INCHES ACROSS CENTRAL KANSAS.
* ICE ACCUMULATIONS... EXCEEDING ONE-QUARTER INCH WILL BE POSSIBLE GENERALLY SOUTH OF A LINE EXTENDING FROM WINFIELD TO MOLINE... TO CHANUTE.
This is a bit confusing to me, really; I'm not exactly sure what they're saying -- are we supposed to get that much more, or will that be the final total? It's difficult to understand, and they keep updating things every six hours or so. While I'm pretty sure I'm not going to end up with three feet of snow on the ground here in Newton, it's still confusing, and basically means that I don't know how much more is coming between now and when it's all over. The Weather Channel says "expect occasional snow to begin at 4:45 PM," which is a little less than three hours from now.
It's not going to be "all over" for several more days, actually; the temperature tomorrow night is supposed to drop into the single digits, and it's not going to get above the freezing point for a high until the weekend...before we get another system bringing more rain and snow on Monday. They're not giving predictions for that one yet -- too busy taking care of the headaches that this storm caused/is causing, I'm sure. All of this moves into my parents' area back home over the course of the next 24 hours as well, and right now what hit here last night is currently hitting Daisy up in Omaha. It's bad enough to where I have two Amazon shipments (one's my sport coat, and I have a second one coming as well) that have been delayed, and that almost never happens.
Of course, if the university closes down again tomorrow, it means nothing to us in the English department -- we neither teach nor hold classes on Fridays. Even if we did, it would matter little, as most of us wouldn't be able to dig out anyhow even if the university remains open. I'm not planning on leaving the house until at least Sunday. The only thing I may need between now and the end of the weekend would be more cigarettes, and if I have to I'll strap on the steel-toed Caterpillar boots I have in the closet and walk the mile or so to the gas station for them. Trying to get the Monte Carlo out and about would be a driveway-shoveling, slip-sliding nightmare right now, and not worth the time or energy when I could get some exercise and walk to the gas station much more easily if necessary. For now, though, I don't have to worry about anything -- I'm staying indoors with my warm kitties and am planning to have a huge bowl of hot, vegan dumpling soup for dinner.
My mother checked in with me earlier to make sure I was still okay, and commented that the snow pictures (I sent them to her) made it look like I was still living in West Virginia. Yep. It's pretty similar to a standard WV snowstorm. People out here just freak out about it a lot more.
I do have stuff to do over the next five days that I'll be at home; I really should do my taxes, I need to pay the rent (once I can wade my way through the snow out to the mailbox), I have to revise my lesson plans to reflect the snow day today, and I need to work on my comps and thesis stuff as much as possible -- in addition to the normal household chores. I'll also have to keep my eye on the weather as the weekend ends -- it'll suck even harder for my students if we do get another storm on Monday and I'm unable to come in on Tuesday morning, but it'll keep them from being on a lopsided schedule for the next week or so. And, eventually, I would imagine I'll have to at least attempt to shovel or clean off the driveway somehow if I want to leave the house at all within the next week. I don't have a high-riding SUV like my parents or some friends do.
On that note, I'm going to get something to eat and get a shower -- I'm sincerely enjoying having a fair amount of downtime, for once.
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