I've lived in Maryland my entire life, through nor'easters, blizzards, light dustings, sweltering summers, tropical storm Isabelle, ice storms, and ridiculous rains but never in my life did I expect something like this to happen here. One interesting thing I've noticed is that Maryland follows a pattern for blizzards. Its 3 years, 3 years, 4 years and then it repeats all over again.
The first storm I can remember is what came to be known as the Ice Storm of 1993. I was 8 years old so I don't have a ton of memories, but I remember how big of a deal it was. It started off with snow, probably about a foot or so, which is a pretty decent amount to Maryland standards. And then something horrible happened...it turned to nothing but sheets of ice. I can remember going outside to see what it looked like and being amazed that there was nothing but sparkly ice in place of the snow. I'm pretty sure school was closed for a week. I can also remember needing to go somewhere with my mom towards the end of the storm and driving into the city and being shocked to see piles of snow that were taller than me.
The Blizzard of 1996 is the next big snow storm that I remember. I was 11 years old and schools were closed for a week again. We moved into the house that my mom is currently in a few days after the storm. There were still gigantic piles of snow all over the place and I had to adjust to a house that didn't have a huge hill out front for instant sledding options.
Then came the snow of 2000. This wasn't a blizzard and was probably one the smaller snow storms that we had ever received. I vaguely remember it, just that schools were closed and walking half a mile to go to a park with a large hill to go sledding.
2003 was my senior year of high school. This was the year that I learned just how much I hated snow. Why did I start to hate snow? Because I had a car and lived on a relatively main road. It took me more than 2 hours to dig my car out of the snow that was plowed up against it. Once again, I didn't have school for a week or so and for the first time, that was great too. Seniors aren't required to make up snow days. What could be better than that!
The pattern didn't really work for 2006-2007. I can only vaguely remember there being snow, but I can't remember how much or if I was completely annoyed at digging out my car and trying to get to work.
And here we are in 2010. We received our first snow storm in December of 2009. Almost two foot of snow that decided to show up on a Saturday morning and wreak havoc for anyone who had weekend plans. Monday mornings' drive into work wasn't horrible, the roads were mainly clear and there were just a few spots that could have used more salt. Overall, I didn't complain, I knew what to expect. And then last weekend happened. The snow was set to start on Friday afternoon and not stop until Saturday evening with close to two foot of snow in some areas expected. We went to the grocery store on Thursday. Honestly, I've went to the grocery store the day before a storm tons of times in my life but never have I experienced the chaos that was Giant that night. The line for the deli was crazy, the eggs were almost gone, the store was restocking so huge pallets of cereal, toilet paper and cleaners were all over the store, along with tons of people trying to maneuver their carts. Oh and the carts! When we got there, there were absolutely no regular carts left. We stood there for a few minutes, waiting to see if someone would bring one back, but eventually just decided that a cart with the built in baby seat would just have to do. Having already experienced one snow storm, I was amused at the situation and wanted to yell at all of the people at the store 'THE WORLD ISN'T ENDING. ITS JUST SNOW!' but I decided to be nice and skip that.
Friday night the snow started around 4 or 5 here. By 9 PM at night there was enough snow on the ground to make a snowman. Please ignore his abs, I had nothing to do with those. Although I was rather happy with the fact that I found his Reeses cup eyes and carrot nose. Take note of how much of the building you can see under the windows. This will be important later.
Saturday, the snowman looked like this:
I took the picture through a bedroom window because I wasn't interested in going outside to get a better shot of him. If you look closely, you can see that the snow is already creeping up our windows in the very front of the picture.
Monday I took a snow day from work and later in the afternoon tried to get out of the apartment complex. The parking lot still wasn't completely plowed and there was 6-8 inches of slush and ice that my car was just not interested in going through. So I gave up and said screw it. Here are pictures of the main road that was supposedly plowed:
Then the news started talking about the fact that we were going to get another snow storm. No excuse me, ANOTHER BLIZZARD. Seriously, back to back blizzards? WTF is that about? So on top of the almost two foot of snow that we had, almost 2 more foot was coming to join in. My question was the same as everyone else. Where in the world are we going to put more snow? The roads weren't even completely plowed yet. They still haven't plowed all of the side roads and here we are going to get hit by another freaking blizzard! I didn't even bother thinking about going to the store. I figured we would just make do with what we have and that would be the end of it.
OH and I forgot to mention, a very serious thing happened on Saturday. I RAN OUT OF POPCORN. I really love popcorn. I must eat popcorn pretty much weekly and I ran out on Saturday. Do you know how big of an issue that is?? Its huge, believe me.
Tuesday one of my coworkers was nice enough to pick me up with his 4 wheel drive truck and take me to work. It was my first adventure out of the house. I couldn't believe how bad the side roads were or the amount of people that were out on the roads. I understand cabin fever, believe me, but death or a new car doesn't sound like a fair trade off.
It started snowing again Tuesday afternoon and by the time I got home, a little after 5 the snow was just starting to stick to everything again. I can't take it any more. I can't stand the sight of snow. We're almost out of stuff to drink, the junk food supplies are dwindling, and I can't stand being inside anymore. Full set cabin fever has set in. I'm tired of sitting at the computer, I'm tired of email and the SIMS, the TV just annoys me, and I WANT TO GET THE F OUT OF THE APARTMENT!
I think I'm going to develop a nervous twitch if I can't get out of here soon. So, I'll leave you with the most recent pictures, I just went outside to take:
It won't be much longer before the snow will be over our window sills and not just because of the drifts.
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