Mark of Fridays: Snow day

If you live here in Illinois, there's not much we can tell you about the Blizzard of 2011. You were there. You saw how bad it was.
If you live somewhere else, well, it was something else. Matt's Minnesota friends would probably scoff, but it's hard to describe how disabling 2 feet of snow in one night can be to a community.

The snow started around 3 p.m. Tuesday. All schools and most businesses had closed early because there was lots of warning.
Lynne and Mark were home by 3:30 p.m. Matt got back around 5 p.m. Early deadlines (so that delivery people could get a head start) made staying at work useless. By 8 p.m., it was snowing hard with - this was a new one - thunder snows. Odd/cool.
At midnight, Matt wandered around a bit outside. The snow was swirling in the wind, creating huge drifts and giant lulls. The ground was almost bare in one spot, then three feet high a few steps over. Still, Matt went to bed thinking this storm, like many others, wouldn't live up to the hype. But, he was excited to get to work and cover The Big One.
Ha.
When Lynne and Matt woke up Wednesday morning, it had been snowing heavily through the night. Lynne, of course, had a snow day. They had called that on Tuesday. And, seeing the results of the blizzard (snowtastrophe or snowtorious or SNOMG! or snopocalypse, if you prefer) Matt was psyched to go to work. This was real news! He planned to shovel out the CRV, then head into the office.
The first sign that this could be an issue was when he opened the garage. The door kept going up, up, up, up, up but there were no sky. Two feet is a lot of snow.
At 7 a.m. Wednesday, no one else on the block was out yet. (Let the record show that Matt had the first cleared driveway.) The wind was still blowing a bit and a light snow was falling. It was quiet. The street looked amazingly pristine. Only the mailboxes sticking up indicated where the road might be.
Because both cars were parked in the driveway, it was fairly easy to clear. Plus, the snow was light. The street hadn't been plowed yet, but Matt figured he might be able to barrel through to a main road.
Uh, no.

The CRV hit the end of the driveway. And stopped right there. It just wouldn't go back. It became quite clear that this was a special storm and that Matt has really underestimated it.
Matt knew he'd have to wait for a plow to be able to get to work. No problem, right? He headed up to the computer and started emailing and calling sources to see what was going on.
After an hour, he was back outside, helping neighbors clear their driveway. At 10 a.m., still no plow. Matt made some more calls. At 1:30 p.m., still no plow. Matt was getting antsy. It's a point of pride to go to work on days like this. One guy at work tells the story of skiing to the office in the 1979 blizzard. Matt was starting to go stir crazy. Even worse, Matt was now of Diet Coke.
Matt made a snow angel in the road. No plow. By 5 p.m. Matt had written three stories and it was clear he was not getting to the office. He wasn't alone. In an office of about 100 people, 9 made it to work. (And one of those slept there overnight.) Most of the reporting and all of the designing was done remotely. Amazing technology.

The plows finally showed up at 7:15 a.m. Thursday. That's 40 hours after snow started falling before a plow touched Eldorado Lane. I know there's a lot of road to cover, but that seems a bit ludicrous.
After Matt cleared the two foot high, four foot deep pile of snow the plow deposited at the end of the driveway, he finally headed into the office. The pile at the end of the driveway is at least six feet high.
There's some great pictures from the Beacon here. Trib has some amazing photos of Lake Shore Drive.

Now, driving down the street seems like driving through some eery ice castle, with towers of snow piling high on each side of the snow corridor. And the way the wins moved snow was amazing - almost artistic. Some backyards appear to have more than five feet of snow in them. You can see grass in others.

So, Blizzard 2011 is in the books.
The mail never showed up, which made Matt feel better about not getting to the office. (No mail Thursday, either.) And the newspapers that staff worked so hard to put together never showed up Wednesday. Or Thursday.
But, overall, all disasters were averted. Power and heat stayed on. Cars started.No injuries besides Matt's sore back. The dog managed to find a bathroom spot. Mark got to spend the day with Mom and Dad, building a story that he will get sick of hearing. And the Diet Coke has been replenished.
Only one question remains: How many days until pitchers and catchers report?