I am a winter person. Michael puts up with my winter-love, although as he is Chief Shoveler, I don’t think he has quite the same affinity. That being said, we spent a year and a half in Southern California, where the only snow we saw was sitting on the mountains above Glendale, and when we got back to Pittsburgh, I was sooooo excited for some real-deal winter.
But 2009 didn’t have a whole lot to offer in the snow department. Thankfully, in 2010 we made the trek to Punxsutawney and visited Phil, all of which led to the biggest snow since the Blizzard of ’93.
Oh, that’s right, I said it: THE BIGGEST SNOW SINCE THE BLIZZARD OF ’93.
If you haven’t lived in Pittsburgh all of your life, you may not know how important the Blizzard of ’93 was. I’ll point you to my other blog entry about snow so you can read up. The short version is this: in March of 1993, Pittsburgh got over two feet of snow dropped upon it in the course of a day, schools were closed for a whole week, and the city basically shut down so our favorite old meteorologist Joe DeNardo could keep us informed on the minute-to-minute updates of the storm.
After this, all winter weather conditions in Pittsburgh are referred to in relative Blizzard of ’93 terms. For example, something could be, ‘half as much snow as we saw in the Blizzard of ’93,’ or, the windchill could be ‘nearly Blizzard of ’93 levels, but without the immense accumulation.’
Well, if you can believe it, the snowstorm we encountered overnight between February 5th and 6th was the first storm to really rival the Blizzard of ’93. All we could do was watch it fall and tune in to WPXI to hear where else it was falling.
Oh, and then we decided to take a whole bunch of pictures 🙂
This was taken as the snow first began to fall around rush hour on Friday evening. I was fortunate to have the weekend off from work, so we were able to sit in our house and watch the accumulation!
The snow had all fallen by the time we woke up Saturday morning, and Michael had to dig this little valley out for Lucy to go for a walk.
Lucy thought it was really grand to jump into the snowdrifts and have to be carried out.
Then she decided maybe she didn’t like winter quite so much after all, and really, her bum was terribly cold and she would like to go in and warm her paws by the vent.
Saturday evening, we went out to take our pictures in the snow. Notice how I am wearing a sweatshirt and Michael is wearing a full winter coat and scarf? His ears were cold. 🙂
I stood in the shoveled-out bit so you could see how tall the snow piles were around me.
And then I danced inappropriately. 🙂
21 freakin’ inches in our backyard!
Sunday afternoon, Michael spent about five hours shoveling our car out, as I had to go to work on Monday morning. Here is the gigantic snowpile he created with the stuff that had been on the car!
And finally, my parents had no power since Friday evening of the storm, so they spent Sunday night at our house with their dog Piper. Lucy and Piper both love and hate each other, and Lucy thought it was just hilarious to lock Piper outside after a bathroom break. 🙂