At 6PM Tuesday night it was raining and 48 degrees, When I went to bed at 11PM it had dropped below freezing, the winds had increased, and there was already snow on the ground.
The winds were howling Tuesday night into Wednesday!! The house was shaking!! It was a fitful nights sleep at best. I expected to lose power and perhaps the roof as well!!!
So this MASSIVE continued to rage all night and was still going strong Wednesday morning when I arose at 6. I turned on the local news verified that the kids had off, as no sane person would expect kids to venture out in this weather, and sent my daughter back to bed after having her turn off her brother's alarm clock as she gets up a few minutes earlier than he does on school days.
Listening to the news I heard there were 64 MPH winds! They were warning people "Stay home unless you absolutely have to venture outside! Don't Drive!!". Did I listen? No!
The drive to work was very surrealistic and dangerous to boot! Since it made the change from pouring rain to snow very quickly there was ice under the snow in many places. This was to be quite dangerous for me later as you will soon read below.
I pulled out of my driveway and approached the intersection on the corner; there should have been metaphorical tumbleweeds rolling down the street, the normally busy intersection was eerily deserted, the traffic signals, suspended from the poles by chains moving wildly, the wind whipping up little dust devils of snow.
I turned, after slowing to a crawl first, at the next intersection and proceeded down the street that the kids Mom's house is off of and slowly over the bridge that crosses I-96 which is usually icy and today was even more so. Howling gusts of wind were sending huge drifts of snow across the roadway dropping visibility to near zero whenever this occurred.
I drove very slowly completing about 2/3 of the drive without any cars behind me and only a few coming the other way. I turned onto the main road that the plant is one and after going through the last intersection began slowly climbing the hill towards the driveway of the first entrance.
Traveling under 20 MPH I hit a stretch of pure ice! In an instant I lost control of the car, the Mustang spining out and doing two complete 360's, and nearly completing a third before I regained control and continued onward. Bill Cosby's bit of "when you go into a skid turn into the direction of the skid. That's like saying when someone throws a left hook at you, lean into it!" went through my mind.
The winds were howling Tuesday night into Wednesday!! The house was shaking!! It was a fitful nights sleep at best. I expected to lose power and perhaps the roof as well!!!
So this MASSIVE continued to rage all night and was still going strong Wednesday morning when I arose at 6. I turned on the local news verified that the kids had off, as no sane person would expect kids to venture out in this weather, and sent my daughter back to bed after having her turn off her brother's alarm clock as she gets up a few minutes earlier than he does on school days.
Listening to the news I heard there were 64 MPH winds! They were warning people "Stay home unless you absolutely have to venture outside! Don't Drive!!". Did I listen? No!
The drive to work was very surrealistic and dangerous to boot! Since it made the change from pouring rain to snow very quickly there was ice under the snow in many places. This was to be quite dangerous for me later as you will soon read below.
I pulled out of my driveway and approached the intersection on the corner; there should have been metaphorical tumbleweeds rolling down the street, the normally busy intersection was eerily deserted, the traffic signals, suspended from the poles by chains moving wildly, the wind whipping up little dust devils of snow.
I turned, after slowing to a crawl first, at the next intersection and proceeded down the street that the kids Mom's house is off of and slowly over the bridge that crosses I-96 which is usually icy and today was even more so. Howling gusts of wind were sending huge drifts of snow across the roadway dropping visibility to near zero whenever this occurred.
I drove very slowly completing about 2/3 of the drive without any cars behind me and only a few coming the other way. I turned onto the main road that the plant is one and after going through the last intersection began slowly climbing the hill towards the driveway of the first entrance.
Traveling under 20 MPH I hit a stretch of pure ice! In an instant I lost control of the car, the Mustang spining out and doing two complete 360's, and nearly completing a third before I regained control and continued onward. Bill Cosby's bit of "when you go into a skid turn into the direction of the skid. That's like saying when someone throws a left hook at you, lean into it!" went through my mind.
Luckily for the Mustang and I were both I managed to stay on the road and there were no cars around me! I was very happy that I did not shoot off of the road onto the side with the field it would have taken ages to extricate the Mustang with the weather conditions and many accidents already being reporting on the news. Plus, even though the road had ice under it, the might before it had been raining torrentialy, so the bare field undoubtedly would have had mud underneath the snowy surface.
On the news they had said virtually every school is West Michigan was closed, well over 500 schools and businesses in total. Slide offs and whiteout conditions were reported all across the area. One particularly bad stretch was I-94 which was closed for awhile overnight due to icy
conditions.
Smiths had a "We never close" policy - you could stay home, take day with no pay or make the time up, or take a vacation day but the plant was always open. One day in my 28 years with the company we got a day off with pay in New Jersey because it snowed so bad the Governor declared a state of emergency, so work was called and we got paid for the day too. GE has a similar policy plus they are much more "Work From Home" friendly so folks in IT and a lot of other jobs can telecommute. So, unless you lose power, you can work from wherever you have a computer and an Internet connection. If I was fully transitioned into my new role, I would have stayed home since I would not have the hands on requirement on the data center that I do now, but since most of the folks in my group live further away than myself I envisioned many would be working from home and some physical presence on site is required. It turns out over half the department opted to play it safe and work from home.
Even after I had arrived at work I could see the storm raging outside for several hours. I could hear the wind outside and you never hear much from outside through the thick walls and glass! The lawn service guy can go by my window with one of those industrial stand up riding mowers and you barely hear it......
The sun is beginning to shine but the wind is still blowing away and the temperature is 6 degrees..
Note: I wrote the preceding during lunch time yesterday, taking a rare break while at work. I wrote the following last evening after returning home.
Continuing after my ride home from work, the sun that peeked out at lunch was very short lived and it got overcast and snowed some more. I left work around 3:30PM. The roads were still incredibly treacherous, the Mustang and I having to exercise extreme care not to slide off the road. I headed over to Burger to nab lunch as I had promised this to Scott and Danielle. I ordered and eventually reached the window. I passe din my credit card only to be informed after a delay by some young teenager that it their modem was not working and they could not connect to the credit card authorization service, so, I would have to pay cash. I told him I did not have any cash hence the use of the credit card. "I don't know what to tell you." said the teen. The manager overheard this, came over, apologized, and handed me the food and receipt and told me to pay her next time I was by. I thanked her largelyand was very pleased as it's good to see some trust these days! I headed for the highway finding the ramp was a nightmare, so icy and nothing down for traction that I could see, in fact the 2 miles of I96 that I traversed was in sad shape, my maximum speed was 30, and most of the trip was at 20 to 25.
I arrived home secure in the knowledge that the car and I would NOT be leaving the garage until I headed to work in the morning!
footnote: MORE snow is predicted this evening, up to another 7 inches, and the temperature right now is a balmy 15 degrees, almost double the 7 when I awoke this morning.
On the news they had said virtually every school is West Michigan was closed, well over 500 schools and businesses in total. Slide offs and whiteout conditions were reported all across the area. One particularly bad stretch was I-94 which was closed for awhile overnight due to icy
conditions.
Smiths had a "We never close" policy - you could stay home, take day with no pay or make the time up, or take a vacation day but the plant was always open. One day in my 28 years with the company we got a day off with pay in New Jersey because it snowed so bad the Governor declared a state of emergency, so work was called and we got paid for the day too. GE has a similar policy plus they are much more "Work From Home" friendly so folks in IT and a lot of other jobs can telecommute. So, unless you lose power, you can work from wherever you have a computer and an Internet connection. If I was fully transitioned into my new role, I would have stayed home since I would not have the hands on requirement on the data center that I do now, but since most of the folks in my group live further away than myself I envisioned many would be working from home and some physical presence on site is required. It turns out over half the department opted to play it safe and work from home.
Even after I had arrived at work I could see the storm raging outside for several hours. I could hear the wind outside and you never hear much from outside through the thick walls and glass! The lawn service guy can go by my window with one of those industrial stand up riding mowers and you barely hear it......
The sun is beginning to shine but the wind is still blowing away and the temperature is 6 degrees..
Note: I wrote the preceding during lunch time yesterday, taking a rare break while at work. I wrote the following last evening after returning home.
Continuing after my ride home from work, the sun that peeked out at lunch was very short lived and it got overcast and snowed some more. I left work around 3:30PM. The roads were still incredibly treacherous, the Mustang and I having to exercise extreme care not to slide off the road. I headed over to Burger to nab lunch as I had promised this to Scott and Danielle. I ordered and eventually reached the window. I passe din my credit card only to be informed after a delay by some young teenager that it their modem was not working and they could not connect to the credit card authorization service, so, I would have to pay cash. I told him I did not have any cash hence the use of the credit card. "I don't know what to tell you." said the teen. The manager overheard this, came over, apologized, and handed me the food and receipt and told me to pay her next time I was by. I thanked her largelyand was very pleased as it's good to see some trust these days! I headed for the highway finding the ramp was a nightmare, so icy and nothing down for traction that I could see, in fact the 2 miles of I96 that I traversed was in sad shape, my maximum speed was 30, and most of the trip was at 20 to 25.
I arrived home secure in the knowledge that the car and I would NOT be leaving the garage until I headed to work in the morning!
footnote: MORE snow is predicted this evening, up to another 7 inches, and the temperature right now is a balmy 15 degrees, almost double the 7 when I awoke this morning.
1 comment:
Yikes!
I am pleased that you survived this horrid experience! I shall not soon complain about our weather after reading this detailed report. We are fortunate indeed to have only wetness and wind.
- David
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