I heard an arctic blast was coming down over much of America within this week. I'm sorry you're so cold. I lived in Illinois on and off for 17 years, and in Wisconsin for 18 months, so I know exactly what kind of difficulty you're experiencing. I could tell you so many winter stories I've experienced.
In Wisconsin, it was often -25 to -50 outside, and whiteouts were the order of the day on many days, particularly in winter of '95 and '96. I got an extra week of school because of the snow days we had one year. We didn't even have spring one year!
On January of '99, we got a freak snowstorm that dropped 15 inches of snow on us. (Most winters in central IL dump a maximum of 6 inches, and that's if we get actual snowfalls). My poor dad dislocated his shoulder shoveling heavy snow out of the driveway. We had to hire a nice neighbor with a snowblower to tunnel out our front walk. We had an Alaskan Malamute at the time who thought she was in heaven, she was so happy at all the snow :D. She was kind enough to stomp down a trail from our screened-in porch to the south gate in our backyard.
In February of '07, we had a really nasty blizzard that kept shutting the power off. We were briefly trapped and unable to get the cars out of the driveway, because of the drifts at the end and filling the street. The wimpy, rinky-dink plow they sent gave up right before reaching our house, and mom was very annoyed. She called the city and they brought in a big, yellow, heavy-duty snow plow that did a much better job. Sadly, that was also the day my brother's '94 Saturn died, but that was mostly his fault for not changing the oil often enough. The cold just exasperated the situation.
There were other incidents, but those were the most extreme.
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GlenEllyn (21411)
5 years ago
I was born near Chicago and spent my formative years there before we moved to MN. I've seen my fair share of big snowstorms. We didn't have as many "snow days" when school was called off. I think they're more frequent now, but I haven't checked the stats. But I also think forecasts are better and we're more aware of the potential danger of busloads of kids getting stuck in a ditch somewhere.
The 1991 Halloween blizzard is infamous around here. It started Halloween afternoon as rain, turned to freezing rain, then snow. It snowed for four days, leaving about 30" of snow. But what made it horrible is the ice that formed underneath that snow. The roads were awful that entire winter because of that. It was hard for snow equipment to get down to bare pavement, meaning it was like driving on roads with potholes everywhere - the potholes being the spots where there was no snow/ice. Hard to describe, but believe me, it was awful, no fun at all.
The day before the storm the state was celebrating the Twins' second World Series Championship with a big parade in downtown Minneapolis. And then ❄️❄️❄️. A month later, on Thanksgiving weekend, we got another foot and a half of snow. Record snowfall for that early in the season that winter.
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AmeriGirl26 (13726)
5 years ago
I remember that blizzard! :o We had to do Trick-or-Treating at the mall in our town because it was too cold and dangerous to do normal Halloween that year.
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