POLAR VORTEX HURRICANE

WHAT?
Well, that's what one of my buds coined this morning when I picked him up on the route #7.

We've heard how Georgia got hit with an ice storm--2" of ice with 3" of snow on top of that and stranded people because A: they don't have the equipment to do what we do up north. B: They don't understand the dynamics of driving a car on ice. Uhhhmmm, yeah. You don't. They tried to tell people to stay home. You know how it is. They didn't listen. Dumb humans!

Well, enough about those people. I thought I'd stop in and give you my report from my house down here on Crego Rd., about 8 miles south of DeKalb IL. (we are about 60 miles west of Chicago, and Chicago ain't go nothing on us, believe me!)

We have mountains of snow. And it's nothing idyllic as the picture above. Wish it were.
We have been having a visitor dubbed by our meteorologists as the "Polar Vortex" and it came down to visit all of you all down south... that's why hundreds were stranded sleeping wherever they found a warm place to crash.

David Tulis AP

We have had extremely cold temperatures. The minus 15 readings with wind chills ranging around -40
Which had school closings, including NIU, which my husband and I drive campus buses for them. To give you an idea, we were not going to make it to work. There were 3,4 &5 foot drifts across our drive, across the road, and in order to move that the road commissioner's of our township brought the BIG HONKIN' ASS JOHN DEERE with three awesome blades: one in front one beneath the belly of the beast and the huge arm that extends out and pushes the snow away from the edge of the road. It took him 3 hours to remove snow from our end of the road. We were told people who drove down our road had to stop and turn around on Monday. Yeah. Gonna take your pooch for a walk in the park? I don't think so!!!

This is the first time while my husband and I have lived here that such a huge amount of snow has fallen. We've known many a snow storms and blizzards. The Blizzard of '79 comes to mind.

Sun-Times Media file
Belden Ave. just west of Halsted, Chicago January 16, 1979

In this blizzard it began snowing on January 12, and snowed for nearly three days. Almost two feet of snow fell, and add this to the more than foot and a half from before that. This is why Mayor Micheal Bilandic lost his job and Jane Byrne got the job--he didn't get the plows out there to do their job.

Well, this is all stuff that happened in Chicago. I remember that the snow was so much there was no where to put the snow. It was normal to drive down a street with the snow piled up in the center of it. People put flags or other extensions on their antennas in order to be seen by other drivers before you came to an intersection! We were sledding down the roofs because there were natural slopes. People had to shovel snow off their roofs, or they would collapse. I remember one night a friend and I walked the half mile out to the corner bar in Cortland, I think my brother made it too. There was no one except the bartender there. We saw a car driving around in a field because they didn't know where the damned road was. Snowmobiles were putting in time rescuing people from the cars--like that poor soul out there.

And I was the one who said this year was setting up to become like that one in '79/80. We aren't there on snowfall totals, but it has snowed here every other day. Sometimes it's only an inch or so. Saturday we expect several inches. And next week even more.

At the moment, we have carved out our driveway and it looks like a white canyon. The same goes for the road with 12' high mounds of snow. They're so tall, and you can't see entrances so our park supervisor put up PVC pipes with little red flags on them so you can find the entrance to the park, and to our driveway.

Oh, and last item: We were running low on propane to heat the house with. My husband made the call to our supplier. They quoted him $800 for just a partial fill-up. He's like "What?" And they said that there was a shortage of propane, and that it was all over the news and the Internet. Well, we hadn't heard a thing about it at this point. (We did hear about it later on). He told them they could kindly kiss his ass. He said he'd run it down and then we'd call and tell them they could come and haul out their stupid tank. We'll get someone else next year. We have several space heaters. Some are the little blower heaters, and we also have these radiator heaters that have oil inside that heats up. They work fine. We dress a little warmer, cuddle under blankets and boy do I look forward to my hot bath in the afternoon! My toes are really chilly by then.

As a result of all this absolutely frigid weather, I've had to move my computer out of my office. It is in the west end of the house. One morning I went in there and it was 29 degrees! (Yeah I have a thermometer in there to check the temp). No way we could keep on throwing the heat in there, and still, I'd be cold!

So, I'm in the dining room typing this. Sort of like when I first started out with my computer. I'm still working on the next 2 books. The next Sabrina Strong book, and my brand new one "Dhampir Legacy"--a police procedural/paranormal-mix (yes, there are vampires in this one).

I'll be posting but not often as I work on my books... and deal with the Polar Vortex/Blizzard of 2014.