I guess I’m going to tend to the spiders in the lab for a while until the 80 kph winds come howling across the prairie. I expect the sidewalks to be completely drifted over so I won’t be going in tomorrow.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
That blizzard hit us in Saskatchewan last night, and if it’s still as intense, you’re in for a pounding. We lost power in most of Regina where I live for about three hours at midnight, but because the temperature was so unusually warm (only a couple degrees below freezing) it wasn’t the big deal that it can be at this time of the year. Further north, the (government run) power company said they weren’t sending out crews to fix the outages until this morning. Here’s some highlights from the local public broadcaster :
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/blizzard-rampages-across-sask-1.5872717
There’s a photos of a traffic light post and a Taco Bell sign that blew over in there!
What did Taco Bell do to make teh local magic weather faerie so angry?
Or is that just their way of saying “¡gracias!“?
We just got downgraded from 12″ to only about 3″-6″. I am not surprised and don’t expect much more snow the rest of the year, because I just bought a new snowblower yesterday. Our 25 year old snowblower finally gave it’s last.
@3, Wouldn’t a flamethrower — also useful against the Great Equine Conspiracy — be more effective? Certainly more fun, you’d get to release your inner dragon.
Where I live (as South as possible in Germany), we’ve had about 30 cm of snow this day. Probably more snow than in the last two winters combined — usually we just have constant drizzle and general misery for a winter. Crazy as I am, I nevertheless cycled to work and back — took me about twice as long as usual, but probably quicker than all other options (walking, cross country skiing, taking public transport).
The blizzard here in my corner of MN currently consists of very wet snow. We generally don’t get the additional hazard of high winds blowing the snow into drifts, though we did move Friday’s scheduled job to Sunday to avoid any hazardous travel / being exposed to people.
While clearing snow with a flamethrower does sound like fun, it doesn’t work. Our ground is frozen solid until April. Turning the snow into water would give you a skating rink.
#4 The problem with that solution is that we would then have lots of water. Here in NW Wisconsin, I live in what we call clay country. Even when the ground is not frozen water pools and sits for a long time. Dealing with thick layers of ice is not fun. Also, I think a flame thrower will take significantly more fuel than a snowblower and what is to keep me from burning the whole damn place down.
@6, @7, Use a burning bar then (also known as a thermal lance)… literally an iron girder which is burning. Melts concrete.
Water, what water? Superheated steam (perhaps
burningexploding?). Horses, what horses (perhaps traces in the exploding steam?). Landscape, what landscape? Removed along with the snow…Admittedly, none of these techniques — petrol-engine snowblower, flamethrower, burning bar, return to orbit and nuke, invite the Daleks over (not the wannabe-daleks still occupying Wacko House and hair furor’s maladministration but the real pepper pots from Skaro), etc. — is environmentally-friendly or sustainable, but it does get rid of the snow and horses (and, hopefully, also removes a few peas), and that’s the main thing. The minor side-effect of a charred cinder of a planet is of no importance — in a few billion years the Sun does the same thing anyways…
Sorry PZ, it came ashore in SW Washington to British Columbia. and headed east.
We’re supposed to get a little wind and a half inch or so of rain.
I’ll have to run out and pick up milk later, lest I repeat the events of a couple of years back.
Got to the door just as it started pouring, unlocked the door as a gust of wind drove the rain under the canopy, leaving me drenched to the skin and leaving a me shaped dry spot on the door.
My wife asked why I was laughing and I showed her the door. Should’ve brought soap with me.
If I knew how to include an image link in a comment I would show the local snow drifts that materialised over 36 hours. We are used to massive snowfall, but it took the city 2 days to clear the more vital streets and pavements.
.
I am told the northern polar vortex has split in two, which does unhealthy things to the jet stream, like encouraging blobs of super-cold air to move far south and now making Spain experience temperatures down to -25°C.