The Blizzard of 2011

The "important" post I mentioned yesterday will have to wait one more day thanks to this breaking news--today we had winter storm #3 in Lawrence, and it turned out to be the biggest blizzard I can remember! Once again I kind of doubted we would actually have the crazy storm the weather people were predicting, and I was especially skeptical when I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to absolutely no snow on the ground. I went back to bed for a couple of hours, and when I awoke again the snow had started. Within an hour or so it was coming down hard and the wind was howling, and it didn't stop snowing until more than 12 hours later. I kept shooting little video clips of the snow coming down because it looked like it couldn't come down any harder, but then an hour or so later I'd look outside and it would be coming down even harder! Needless to say I shot a lot of videos today. I think we must have gotten 6-8 inches, but it was hard to tell with all the drifting!

Thankfully the entire city pretty much shut down, and Chad was able to work from home instead of driving to Topeka. Even though the wind chill was way below zero and the snow was not stopping, my ambitious husband went out and tried to shovel a couple of times to stay ahead of the task, but the effort was pretty futile. After weathering the elements for a while, he decided that he wanted to take the storm head-on and drive to Kwik Shop to get a fountain soda. I expressed my concerns that this was a horrible idea, but I gave in and agreed to go on the adventure with him as long as I could get my new favorite treat--Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt--which is right across from Kwik Shop.

Once we got down the driveway and onto the street we realized this adventure might take a while. The snow was deep and blowing hard, and even our 4 wheel drive Escape had a difficult time with traction. It was slow going, but we eventually made it to Kwik Shop without getting stuck, but we decided to scrap our additional Orange Leaf and possible Hy-Vee plans, since visibility was so bad we couldn't even see Orange Leaf across the street!

After our blizzard adventure was over I decided to put all my little video clips together so that I could share the experience with everyone. I probably had about 10 total minutes of video, which I edited down to about 7 minutes. My husband (the broadcast journalism major) informed me that it was entirely too long and needed lots more editing, so the final cut is less than three minutes long--which is certainly luckier for all of you. Of course, if you live in the Midwest, you're probably having your own blizzard experience and don't need to watch ours!



If you enjoyed the music, please check out decker. The song is from Chad's cousin Brandon's latest CD, which is fantastic!