An Overabundance of Snow

For once, our weather in Southern Ontario, Canada, is living up to people's stereotypes. We've had 8 schoolbus cancellations due to weather at my school this winter (that's about 7 or 8 more than usual).

Earlier in the week, my sister got her baby crowning within 40 minutes of going into labour, at which point he stuck fast, shoulder caught behind her pelvic bone. They felt they had 4 minutes before the baby was in danger, so they got out scalpels, did a bunch of cutting, and then reefed the baby out hard, bruising his shoulder and arm. He weighed 10 lbs 9 oz.

I inadvertantly named him. When talking to them earlier that week, I'd asked if they had a name in mind, and they didn't, so I said "teens I'm teaching now often have last names for first names. Names like Connor or Mackenzie. You could always give him a last name from literature. I don't know, like Byron, or something." Then when he was born, it was announced that his name is Byron. I wouldn't call a kid Byron, but they did, and that's ok with me.

The weather was for a huge storm Saturday night (again), so I zipped into the city after school on Friday, hoping to find some novelty baby t-shirt or jumper (with Nirvana on it or something). No luck, so I got him a little navy hoodie, and ordered a Nirvana jumper from eBay. The storm hit 24 hours early, so driving home, I was sliding all over the place. I actually slid straight down a hill when trying to turn left onto a different street.

My power brakes weren't working (fluid leak) so Saturday morning I went to my folks' house in the blizzard (driving very slowly, roads covered in several inches snow) and Dad and I worked on it. We replaced the brake cylinders in the rear brakes (they'd been leaking) and bled the brakes and they started worked wonderfully. Dad also caught me having let my tire pressure go down, which was part of the reason the (soft) tires weren't grabbing snowy road properly. Then, against my parents' wishes, I drove most of the way back through the blizzard as the sun set, and stopped at my sister's. I delivered the hoodie, and a DVD of original 60s Scooby Doo episodes I made for my neice (it's her favourite cartoon right now) as well as a CD of Nirvana songs done as lullabies.

Eventually, completely stupid, with the snow no shallower than a foot on the roads where ruts were, I started to drive home in the dark (I live 10 minutes drive away in the next town over), it having snowed for more than 24 hours with little or no plowing possible, due to the unceasing volume of snow, and high winds as well. I quickly realized that it was more than possible (likely, actually) to get the car completely stuck on any town street. The entrances to some streets were completely blocked by drifts. I drove home, sliding through snow from 1-3 feet deep and constantly seeming on the verge of losing my forward momentum completely, leaving me stuck in the middle of the highway where there are no streetlights for miles. I didn't meet anyone coming the other way, which was good, as it was necessary to drive more or less down the middle of the road (not that any asphalt or street lines or ditches were visible or anything), the drifts getting too deep halfway to the shoulder on either side. The car would sometimes get into a good set of tire ruts that hadn't quite drifted over, and speed up to as much as 40km/hr (25 mph), then lurch sloppily back down to almost zero. Steering was quite a bit like steering a jetski going very slowly.

Arriving in my town less than an hour later, I somehow managed to get onto the street near my place(seen here), seeing that drifted snow meant I wouldn't even be able to get into my parking lot, let alone navigate around in it. After nearly getting stuck on the street, I got almost up to "person walking at a brisk pace" speed somehow and took at run at a parking spot, and managed to get my car to slide sideways in, off the street, parked almost legally.

Here is the view out my window the next morning of what my car looked like once the plow had been around.

Once I felt like it, and plows had cleaned out my parking lot, I shovelled a lot of snow away from the front half of the car (if the town had given me a ticket after burying my car, I'd have raised some kind of unholy hell) not being careful pitching shovelfulls of snow all over the street if they should have been thrown over the roof of the car onto the sidewalk drifted waist-high, and two people pushed me and the car came free, leaving an amusing car-print behind in the snowbank, bumper contours, licence plate in reverse, rear window and trunk and all.

The trouble with all of this snow driving is clearance. Once the whole undercarriage of the car starts dragging on snow that is high enough to start to lift the car right up off the road, you're going to get stuck. I almost did repeatedly while driving home. I should have slept at my sister's, but they are up and down all night with night feedings, and are both very tired, and generally trying to get used to the new baby, so I didn't.

The Internet tells me there were 25 motor vehicle collisions in our area during this storm, and that there hasn't been this much snow in any single day in March since 1947.