First snow

So it's just a little over halfway though the long weekend, and since my mornings are taking a lovely leisurely pace I figured I may as well make a little post about the weather. So it was bound to happen, after all this is Minnesota, they get snow here, so yesterday (much like with Canadian Thanksgivings) there was the first snowfall.

Having spent the last 5 winters in Edmonton, my only real exposure to significant snowfalls had been when I was back in Montreal for the holidays. Now I'm not saying that it doesn't snow in Edmonton, ask anyone who lived there long enough and they will tell you stories of 6 foot high snow banks...but I'm sure if you search you could find the same stories from a Floridian. You see, the winters that I spent in Edmonton were, to be frank, desert-like. It would snow from time to time, not the big fluffy flakes that those out East are used to, but small pellets, kind of like movie snow, which would barely accumulate and was more likely to blown away rather than shoveled away. But that was all due to the climate, being in the rain shadow of the Rockies the region was generally very arid. Minneapolis however is on the Eastern edge of a state renowned for it's lakes, so it's a lot more humid here (much like Montreal).

So awaking yesterday to several inches of snow was a bit of a surprise, and though beautiful I knew that it would mean that the roads would be hell. So of course one of the first things I did was take Deirdre's car to get some pastries from a local bakery, after all we needed breakfast. Fortunately the roads were almost deserted, as most people take the Friday off, so I could get a felling for the traction and control of her car. You see it also seemed that the road crews took the day off as well, since the roads were pure white (kind of like in Edmonton where they only plow major through ways). Driving for me was fine though, then again, I've driven the Icefields Parkway at around 120 km/h when it was -30 C, the dead of night after skiing all day..oh and the parkway was glare ice at the time. Glen found this out for us, while walking around the car to take his turn driving he found himself suddenly on his back. For some reason, the rest of that drive was done at 90 km/h.

But as expected those who did venture out on the road were generally clueless about how to drive in the snow. Most either seemed to be afraid, or turned their brains off, or were simply from Florida. One of my favorites was the woman I saw as I was walking to the bakery. Though it was snowing rather heavily she didn't bother turning on her lights, but then again I guess that's acceptable when you are only going 10 km/h. Oh, the kicker, she was driving an SUV. Seriously, do the people who by these things not understand the capabilities of those vehicles beyond burning excessive amounts of gas? Another fun aspect that I noticed was the inability to remember which roads were single and double lanes, or simply the desire to have more space, I'm not sure which. The really funny part was that when I was out that night to get some pizza I noticed that the driving didn't improve, even though the roads were clearly salted and some seemed to be plowed. The drivers were doing a bit better, though unwilling to go above 20 mph. But the really funny guy was the one with Florida plates. He clearly had not used his heater before, because he was scraping the inside of his windshield to be able to see out, while drifting into the oncoming lanes...this is going to be a fun winter. He also failed to brush most of the snow off the roof of his car, but then again, at 20 mph that snow wasn't going to be coming off any time soon.

The final joy to the whole snowy day came at 4 am. Deirdre's apartment building has it's own parking lot at the back of the building. Well, they also have a contract to have it cleared, at 4 am apparently. This isn't so bad, unless you have a "garden view" (a.k.a. basement) apartment, with the bedroom window facing the parking lot. Add to this the fact that the truck with the plow made about a dozen passes by the window, and honestly, I think that was done out of spite, because there is still snow out there. So yeah, that was just loads of fun.

Oh well, at least it's nice and pretty out, except for the roads, which already look like a sick grey pudding. But hey, this is winter in a northern climate. All I can say is that it will probably still be one of the warmest winters of my life...how sad is that?