cold...
The Blizzard ... of ... DOOOOOOOOM!
...
In the picture above, I live in McLean County, roughly between the 12.5" and 13" measurements. The snow itself wasn't bad, but the drifting was pretty darn incredible. Four foot drifts in front of the house, and the snow in the street was deeper than the undercarriage of the car - so no trips (I called work and officially rescinded my offer to be available to go into work in case of an emergency). My office closed for the day (at 6am, before anyone went in, since my management team is actually pretty darn good - the 'big insurance companies' in town waited until a lot of their people were on the road or in before closing, which ticked off a lot of people).
We ended up being closed for half of Wednesday as well, because it took until mid-morning Wednesday until the plows could get ahead of the drifting.
So, the kids had three days off after the con, and I had a day and a half (although I spent some of the time working from home to get some things caught up). The drifts in front of the house were up over the evergreen bushes in front of the windows (I haven't had time to take pictures yet - maybe today). Hasn't melted appreciably, since it's been colder than heck since the storm hit (nice 'fire in the fireplace' weather, though).
Now they're telling us we get another 3" or so tonight, along with another bout of strong winds (from the other direction, natch) to build the drifts up even higher...
This makes me almost (but not quite) regret not buying a snowblower during the blizzard of '99 (and then storing it unused for the last seven years because we haven't had that much snow).
