To follow up my last post, our snowboarder left town for Vancouver and the Olympics on Monday night.
He was escorted by the local fire trucks halfway across the county. There was a switchover from the West Side departments to the East Side departments at the precise place where their coverage area begins. The East Side departments escorted him south to the state line, where Wisconsin officials took over for a 15-mile segment where U.S. 2 crosses into Wisconsin before crossing back into Michigan–where, of course, Michigan officials again took over.
Even with (despite?) all the official escorts, he managed to get out of town all right. By the way, I promised a picture from the school assembly last week, and here he is …
Wish him well. Nick is a nice kid. His snowboardcross event takes place on Monday, Feb. 15.
Maybe he should have packed some snow in his suitcase: The reports from Vancouver is that they are transporting snow to the snowboard course by truck and even helicopter because mild temperatures have melted a lot of it away. I even heard they are burying some dry ice under the new snow to keep it from melting too quickly. The Olympics, of course, start this weekend.
I just checked Vancouver’s weather forecast. It says highs in the 50s and lows in the 40s … with rain. If it gets a little warmer, the Olympians could go out and enjoy Wreck Beach.
Then again, there hasn’t been that much snow around here lately, either. We have snow, don’t get me wrong, but the layer of fluffy white insulation hasn’t increased very much for over a month. On New Year’s Day, we got 2 inches. Since then, no more than 1 1/2 inches on any day. December was a good month for snow around here. January, not so much. The snow is still here. We had some temperatures that reached into the 40s in January (as high as 44), but it was still cloudy on those days, so the snow layer mainly just compacted.
Over where N lives, they have a lot more than we do …
This week, I dared to hope we would get some warmer weather that could prompt some serious melting, now that the sun is getting a little higher in the sky. No way. Not this week. Highs in the 20s all week, with lows close to zero. It’s February, you know, and most of us are getting a little weary of winter.
We live right along the highway passing through town. One day in mid January, I unexpectedly found that the end of the front sidewalk, where it meets the highway–an area I had shoveled out just the day before–was plugged tight with freshly plowed snow.
Believe me, it was densely packed and hard to shovel. I muttered as I grabbed the shovel again and re-opened the end of the sidewalk–by hand, of course. Fortunately, I have a big aluminum shovel, which handles the heavy work well.
After midnight that night, I heard a racket outside; after a few minutes I got up to investigate. Here is what I saw…
The state highway department had just cut into all the snow it plowed up alongside the highway the night before, arranging it into “windrows” on the roadway itself. I was now watching the third step–the big windrow of snow was being blown into a large dump truck, which rolled with in tandem with the snow blower.
An empty dump truck followed–when the first truck was full, it moved off and the next truck took its place. Very slowly, the blower and dump trucks made their way up the highway, removing the snow that had been plowed up along the highway the night before.
And suddenly, visibility at intersections was greatly improved, and pedestrians didn’t have to walk on the side of the road any more. The snow gets so deep and heavy that few homeowners shovel the walks that run parallel to the highway–they just clear paths to the highway for the mailman and any delivery trucks that don’t use the alley behind the house.
Of course … some critters have this winter thing all figured out …
drdog