>>175005, >>175006, >>175007, >>175008, >>175009, >>175010, >>175011, >>175012, >>175013, >>175014, >>175015, >>175016, >>175017, >>175018, >>175019, >>175020, >>175021, >>175022, >>175023, >>175024, >>175025, >>175026, >>175027, >>175028, >>175029, >>175030, >>175031, >>175032, >>175033, >>175034, >>175035, >>175036, >>175037, >>175038, >>175039
Mark Hemingway @Heminator - Do people know what's really going on with the weather in the DC area? It's weird, and so I'm just going to explain this, in case people are interested. So basically it snowed a fair bit here -- but with a twist. Now I grew up at 4000 feet in the Cascades and there was regularly 3+ feet of snow in my front yard. So I'm not normally sympathetic to the mid-Atlantic freakout over snow. It snows here, at least a few inches, almost every year.
-
Still 6+ inches is a lot here, but it didn't just snow a lot. It was immediately followed by a few inches of sleet. But somehow it stayed cold, and you ended up with an ice storm overlayed on six inches of snow. It's gotta be a one in a million weather condition. (Though oddly, I did see something similar to this, if not nearly as bad, after a snow storm in the Columbia River Gorge when I was very young.)
-
Anyway, it iced over the snow and it has stayed very cold -- below freezing -- every day since. And the ice has continually hardened to the degree that I can stand on the snow in my front yard without sinking -- I am a big 6'5"
-
This has made snow removal incredibly difficult. I've heard people referring to what we're dealing with as "snow-crete." I've basically completely ruined a regular shovel using it to chip at the ice to clear my walk and drive, which took 3+ days of off and on solid effort. It was like literal chain gang work, just breaking ice.
-
On the roads, stuff got plowed initially, so roads are mostly bare, but the plowed snow piles on the sides of the roads that didn't get removed right away cant just be pushed away. You basically need a front-end loader or other serious equipment to move it, because it isn't mounds of snow -- to varying degrees it's solid ice. My VA suburb is literally chipping away at the problem but many places the roads are one lane when they're normally two. Haven't been in DC since last week but I'm sure that city's famously competent public works dept is ON IT. (LOL JK)
-
Anyway, I've generally been annoyed with how they handle snow around here, but I was even here for "Snowmageddon" in 2010 when we got 30 inches of snow, and this might be worse in terms of it being difficult to deal with -- and it isn't projected to rise above freezing for another week.
https://x.com/Heminator/status/2018419077337817168

Mark Parisi @OffTheMarkComic - Autocorrect
https://www.offthemark.com/DailyCartoon?prod_id=13529