Early Snapshots of the Blizzard

The storm should continue till around midnight tonight. Tomorrow is the Big Digout. Below is a shot of my deck, where I measured 18″ at noon on the flat (not drifted) area:

SnowNoon

Update: I measured 22″ on my deck at 4:30 PM. It’s still snowing hard and we have another eight hours to go!

Update: I measured 23″ on my deck at 11:00 PM. The snow is finished and even the wind has stopped, so the storm is over. The weather predictions were spot on for this storm. They’re getting much better at this sort of thing than they were a few decades ago. I mildly startled a young, lone deer in my yard when I opened the door to measure the snow. He looked up from nibbling on one of my bushes, looked at me quizzically and focused his ears toward me. I think he’s a young stag that got booted from his herd by the dominant stag. I’ve seen him out there alone many times. He doesn’t have a lot of weight on him, so I wonder if he’s going to survive the winter.

One of my daughters sent this photo as sign of moral support. She promised to have another mai-tai in a coconut while basking in the sun and thinking about me shoveling snow for hours tomorrow. What more could a person ask for? How thoughtful!

Support

Here’s a cross section across Maryland, starting at the Atlantic coast and moving west across the Eastern Shore, across Chesapeake Bay, into the piedmont then into the Appalachians. The heaviest snows were predicted for the piedmont.

On the Atlantic coast looking across the bridge to Fenwick Island and Ocean City:

OceanCityDrawbridge

The Eastern Shore, which is the peninsula between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic:

EasternShore

A secondary road just entering into the piedmont:

BelAirRoad

Interstate 70 north and a little west of my house. There’s a major highway under there somewhere:

I70

US 40 in the Appalachians in Western Md: The snow has just about buried the guardrails:

US40

Water acts as an amazing temperature moderator because water molecules are elastic. They expand when absorbing heat giving them the ability to absorb a lot of thermal energy. When the air temperature drops they contract and give that excess energy back into the air.

As an aside, I know that Jon, trapped on Biscayne Bay in Florida, is deeply disappointed he’s going to miss the chance to take out his toboggan and come back to hot chocolate and cookies.

25 thoughts on “Early Snapshots of the Blizzard”

  1. We got about a quarter inch here. They shut down everything, the stores were packed last night. All the transplants get a big laugh over the ruckus, but nobody I’ve met misses it enough to go back to shoveling. Best of luck.

  2. It was about ten years ago when I was over there with a friend. We had a reservation to use the Kitt Peak Observatory amateur telescope which is about 16 inches and capable of viewing galaxies like the Sombrero Galaxy.

    The deal is that you need to schedule a moonless night and it takes a year in advance, We were going to play golf a few days, then spend the night with the telescope. You get a staff astronomer to help you and there is a sleeping room when you get too tired, plus breakfast in the morning.

    Well the day before we were scheduled, it snowed about 3 inches in downtown Tucson and a foot on Kitt Peak. No visibility at all. Bummer.

    It gets cold in Tucson. It was i4 degrees the other night but rain is mostly in the summer “monsoon season” so not much snow. I have been there playing golf when the greens had heavy frost so we had to wait until it melted before playing.

    I would much rather be living there but my kids would all freak. We still might do it.

  3. In March of 2003 Denver got a dump of 39 inches, which is why I have a high ground clearance four wheel drive truck. It was a very good thing that this happened in March as it all quickly melted.

  4. Jealous. We’ve had zip in BC for the second year and my Sammy has to go to about 1000 meters to get any. Oh well.

    Good luck with it all. You may get snickers from up here but they get plowed out the next day.

  5. 32 inches in Chambersburg PA. I recently moved into an apartment complex and thought, “Great! No more shoveling snow for a while!” The joke was on me; last night after the parking lot was plowed I had to dig a path from my door to the lot. The plowed snow was shoulder high at one point but at least there was no ice. This morning I dug the car out; one less thing to worry about tomorrow….

  6. Wow. 32 inches. I think that shoveling may the worst part, but the ice from melted snow that goes on for days or weeks is right up there.

  7. Dearieme
    Here in Britain we were promised the end to snow by a keen global warming alarmist some years ago. It ain’t worked out that way.

    There was a reference to an article dated 2000 from London’s Independent several days ago in an Instapundit link to the Watts Up With That blog. Following the links, one can download a PDF of that Independent article (“Snowfalls are Now Just a Thing of the Past” March 20,2000).

    However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

    “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

    Watts Up With That found out the article was no longer at the Independent website. I confirmed this by doing an Advanced Google Search. From now on the progs will claim that those who cite that “Snowfalls are Now Just a Thing of the Past” are liars. Because it got erased from the Independent website, it never happened. Just like those who got erased from Stalin-era photos in the Soviet Union.

  8. Or all the email and data that got erased and continues to erased from IRS hard drives, State Dept hard drives, and any other evidence the Left wants destroyed. The Democrats are more and more a mix of the communist party and a crime family. And half the population will gladly vote for more of same as long as they get promised free stuff. Many banks and businesses fit into that category as well. Let’s not forget that TARP and the QE’s were the largest outright robberies in the history of the world.

  9. Thanks, Gringo. Fifteen and a half winters have passed since that bozo made his absurd suggestion. Now of course, like-minded bozos take the position that the presence of snow is a sign of global warming. I sometimes wonder whether life is just a series of one damn silly religion after another.

  10. You got lucky. I have the drifts over the top of my deck railings out in Harpers Ferry. Civic Association still hasn’t plowed our street at all.

  11. I know you are Luddites, but it’s really climate change engendered by global warming caused by human activity.

    This will and does change weather patterns as you are finding out. The “silly religion” is what you lot are using to hide from this fact.

  12. “So just like the Roman Warm and Medieval Warm, eh, Penny?”

    Those are really dumb talking points. Your religion is not at all sophisticated.

    Humans have been affecting everything ever since. The effects were small when we were few and did little to alter our world. Now they are larger, enough to change things. It may be too simple for you.

  13. Neither is yours Penny – the Church of Man-Made Global Warming, I suppose. Though now it is being called “climate change.” What we usually call “Weather.”
    And Luddites? Really? You are drawing an analogy between us libertarian-oriented scientific skeptics and English industrial workers smashing machines in protest of management and working conditions. I suppose it makes sense in your world.

  14. “You are drawing an analogy between us libertarian-oriented scientific skeptics and English industrial workers smashing machines in protest of management and working conditions. I suppose it makes sense in your world.”

    Perfect sense. You are supporting an anti science point of view. You have decided your ‘talking points’, generated by ignorance are true. Luddite, although not an exact fit, does look good on you.

    All those scientists are conspiring to fool you libertarian heroes. Uh huh.

  15. Penny, you would not know real science until it hits you up one side of your head with a 2X4. If you had any engineering/science education, you would know the whole global warming/climate change/climate chaos scheme is completely WRONG. ALL of the calculated average temperature changes are within the error of the measurements, which means they are not real changes at all. AND that is with the blatant changing of the raw data records by the proponents of this charade.

  16. Moi?! Supporting an anti-science point of view – who had scientific method served up nightly over the dinner table, from Daddy the research biologist? (*snicker*) Yeah, sure, Penny.

  17. PenGun, please critique the following:
    1)The validity of the prediction of “David Viner, a senior research scientist..at the CRU in the University of East Anglia,” which I referred to in my previous comment [January 24th, 2016 at 1:54 pm], which is from a 2000 article in London’s Independent.
    2) The decision of the Independent to erase that article-“Snowfalls are Now Just a Thing of the Past” – from its website.

    Thank you.

Comments are closed.