First Blizzard
We had the first blizzard of the season today. When I left the house the roads were clear. About 5 minutes later, it started snowing, but the snow was just blowing around making the road surface look pretty. 15 minutes after that, the snow was sticking and turning to ice, and everyone was sliding around trying not to hit things with their expensive SUVs :).
At that point, I turned around, thinking that the drive home would be even worse. It took me more than twice as long to get back home. Then I drove the kids to school, and the wife to the subway, before making it back home again.
* Time on the road: 2 hours.
* Times stuck: 1 (on a relatively small hill, too).
* Skids: 5 or 6, not counting powering around corners with the front-wheel drive :-)
* Times _almost_ rear-ended: 2 (in both cases, I had left myself enough room to move forward and avoid the guy behind me who couldn’t stop ).
The afternoon drive was much better; the salt trucks had been out, and the freezing rain didn’t materialize (at least, not here). People always complain about how the first snowfall of the season is the worst, because everyone has forgotten how to drive in snow. I think it’s worse than _that_. For most other snowfalls of the season, the roads are covered with salt left over from previous days, and the snow melts as it hits. Today, with no salt (and -4°C) the snow fell, then was crushed into ice by passing cars…
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SNow, snow, snow
Our first big snow As Harald points out, it snowed quite a bit today. I wouldn’t call it a blizzard myself, but then again, I didn’t have to drive around in it like he did. I did take some pictures and movies though….
Sadie’s bus was 10 minutes out of Finch station yesterday morning when the truck in front of it did a sideslip. Driver says, “Well folks, looks like we’re going to be stuck here for a bit,” and everyone (everyone) pulls out some sort of portable electronic device to let the office know they’re going to be late. (Punchline is, half the pelpl on the bus also pulled out knitting, ‘cuz they’ve been here before…)
There were two buses stuck on Don Mills yesterday. The first was stuck at a stop about halfway up a hill. The second obviously tried to go around the first, and then either it slid sideways or the first slid backwards, and _crunch_! They were blocking the two right lanes, which meant that all of the other traffic had to try to go around. Of course, they all had to slow down and stop, and then _they_ couldn’t get started again… What a mess!
This morning there was a car wrapped sideways around a tree a couple of blocks from my house. That guy was obviously going _way_ too fast, to have done as much damage as he did.