Wind is bad. I too have learned how to (mostly) navigate the snow, which to be honest is cleaned up pretty well here by the highway folks. Once you get to a main road at least, it’s usually fine unless you happen to be driving in the middle of a storm when it’s coming down hard.
But wind…ugh. Not much you can do about it, and as you rightly note, big flat-sided semi trucks and wind do not make for comfortable winter driving.
Petey
6205
6 degrees at my house this morning. My wife got to work at 5am and it said 1 degree in Arlington. My Wrangler’s heater really does not work anymore so I had a nice 25 minute hypothermic commute. But, rain and 40 all next week.
jpinard
6206
I feel like all that’s missing is the wolves…
Less snow in the St. Louis area, about three inches, but dear lord is it cold and the wind is howling. It’s below 10 degrees and falling below zero tonight, and the windchill is pushing it lower. If you have heat and are inside you are fine. If you have to drive about and be out a bit, it’s nasty.
Here in Portland we’ve got a Winter Storm Warning with today having the lowest “high” temp (22 F) in a couple of decades for this date and freezing rain starting tonight and continuing through tomorrow, with the high right around freezing. Which virtually guarantees widespread power outages tomorrow which may last a few days.
I know this is totally old hat to all of you that live in the Dakotas, Chicago etc. but here in Portland it pretty much sucks, especially a couple of days before Christmas.
CraigM
6210
I very much am glad I didn’t need to cross the ridge into the city. Burnside would be exciting right now.
It’s like being back home again. Except they aren’t salting the roads, and Chicago is super flat.
Those places have more infrastructure to deal with it. I’m assuming Portland doesn’t have any more salt trucks than we do in areas around Seattle. There’s a street near our house that was plowed, but there’s no salt, so it’sa sheet of ice basically (temps were cold enough today that salt might not have helped anyway, but you get what I mean).
nKoan
6212
I lost power for about 2 hours this morning already due to the winds in Portland.
Whereabouts are you? I’m in the Overlook neighborhood in “NoPo.”
Kid’s flight to CLE for Thursday night got cancelled, so I’ll be driving to PIT on Friday afternoon (closest they could get). If anyone sees a Corolla-shaped ice block on the news, it’s been nice knowing you all ;)
Today in NorCal I went outside to do a quick errand and didn’t even put a jacket on.
CraigM
6216
Less, I’m sure. Smaller metro and further south so even less frequent snow.
Today was an outlier, maybe 1/8-1/4” of ice accumulated on my car over a 2 hour span while doing errands. There was enough latent heat the roads didn’t get too bad too quickly, but I would not go anywhere with slopes right now.
Its not actually too terrible, all considered, but people here just don’t know how to cope with this.
So, Vermont has weird weather. I’m in the northern bit of the state, outside of Burlington. Temps rose steadily over night and now it’s high 30s with driving rain, lots of slushy semi-melted gunk everywhere, and bitchin’ high winds that sound like all the souls of Hell just got let out on holiday. And the local power company has been messaging and calling everyone as if they fully expect the Prince of Darkness to descend (ascend?) and pull down all the power lines any moment now.
Which does suck when one, your oil heat depends on electricity for the boiler, and more importantly two, all your water for everything from drinking to the toilets to the boiler comes from a well with an electric pump…
abrandt
6218
So far steady snow here with lots of blowing but none of the really strong gusts they had been predicting. Hoping it stays that way. Even though we get an extra 24+ hours of storm thanks to lake effect picking up after the storm passes, we also get ~20 degrees of warmth from the lake which helps make things a little less severely cold.
Houngan
6219
Whew. Parents came through without losing power, that’s a huge worry gone. (until the next storm.)
I am in Connecticut and the winds, albeit not too crazy, stopped at 6AM. Should be fine passing through. Temperatures won’t really drop again until tonight. We do the Montreal trip a lot from here as my daughter just started at Concordia.
nKoan
6221
SW Portland. On the other side of the hills from downtown Downtown, so the weather is more like Beaverton than Portland (when there is a difference).
JonRowe
6222
Walking the dog will be fun
Houngan
6223
I’m refreshing a weather site hoping to get to 10. Sheesh. But hey, it will be in the 60s in a few days.
