I survived the Polar Vortex!

Last week was quite a week for us! I know a lot of you were dealing with similar weather. This was the storm that wouldn't end, and the extreme cold made it all the worse. When it's as cold as it was, salt doesn't work on the roads, so they were ice covered in snow, and the blowing snow made visibility terrible. Schools were closed all week, including the Universities, which is very rare. The Governor issued a state of emergency telling people to stay off the roads if possible. (lots of people didn't listen). The Postal Service didn't deliver mail for 2 days, UPS and Fed Ex were also grounded. Government buildings, like the Secretary of State were closed as were many restaurants, Dr offices and other businesses. Unfortunately, nurses don't get snow days, and often end up working extra in these situations, if other people can't get in to work. And that's what happened to me last week!
Here's a few pictures to show you what it looked like here. The first two are from the local media.

This was one of several big pile-ups that happened around us.  This one was on a highway quite near to our home.



Here's a shot of the local weather prediction for Wednesday. These are wind chill temps.  The lowest actual temp I saw was minus 9.

This is the road the connect to our road.  It's a fairly busy, paved street, but you wouldn't know it here.

Yes, there are trees out there!
You can see why driving in this was terrible.

 Sorry about the screen in this shot.  This is looking out the window at work.

Here's another work shot.  Our patio is filled with snow!

 Bob stayed very busy snow blowing and shoveling snow.  This is our front walk.

This is in the back yard, where Bob keeps a path clear to his work shop.  Considering that we had little to no snow on the ground when this started, you can see how things changed in 5 days!

I'm so thankful for safety in traveling for so many of us, and for warm homes to return to.
Now we are having an extreme change in weather, with temps much higher than normal.  All this snow will be melting which could cause some flooding.  We'll see what happens.