Snowpocalypse

I learned one fact about the Universe many years ago: if I say that a certain outcome of some event is very likely, the Universe will put me in my place by making the opposite happen.

So naturally, a couple of hours after I published my previous blog post, in which I snarkily made fun of the puny “blizzard” my city had so far experienced, the Universe, or Reality, or the Supreme Being – whoever or whatever is running the weather machine in my neck of the woods – decided, once again, to put me in my place by turning up the volume knob on the snowmaker. It began snowing harder and the wind blew harder and soon the snowfall had become a proper blizzard. Meaning, it was snowing hard and mostly sideways.

I wanted to open the patio door at the back of my house and stick a measuring rod into the snow to check its depth, but the snow had drifted against the lower part of the sliding glass door. I knew if I slid the door open, there was a good chance I’d get a pile of snow inside the door. I’ll wait for the TV to tell me how much snow we got.

I opened the front door and looked outside. The bottom of the storm door is about 20 inches above the ground, and the snow in my front yard is level with the bottom of my door. In fact, the snow has intruded into the front porch, right up to the storm door. I can’t see the houses on the other side of the park across the street, meaning visibility is about a fifth of a mile.

Later, a man in a compact car – a front-wheel drive sedan – became stuck in the road in front of my house. I became aware of him because he was stomping the throttle – voom voom voom vooooom VOOOOOOM voom voom voom vooooom VOOOOOOM voom voom voom vooooom VOOOOOOM and the sound just went on and on. He tried going forward - voom voom voom vooooom VOOOOOOM – he tried going backward -voom voom voom vooooom VOOOOOOM – he turned the wheels left, he turned the wheels right, all to no avail. Obviously, there is ice under the snow. But after ten or fifteen minutes of spinning this way and that way, the wheels somehow got enough purchase on the road to pull the car out of the spot it was stuck in, and the car turned the corner and disappeared into the blizzard.

Tomorrow the sun will return and the landscape will be blindingly bright. People will be shoveling snow and trying to move their cars; some will have success, many will not. It may take a couple of days for a snowplow to push the snow on my street. But no complaints; I’m lucky. I have food, electricity, Internet, the house is warm, and there’s nowhere I have to go or be. That’s bound to change, but for now I’ll sit inside and watch the snowpocalyse.