The Snow Storm

It's a popular and classic thing for adults, at a certain point, to look back on the weather of their youth and declare it to be worse than the weather today.  Be that as it may, I'm absolutely certain that when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s we had a lot more really bad winter weather.  Even into the 1980s this was true.

Indeed folks who track climate often note that the 1970s was a cold decade and there was some discussion in the 60s and 70s about what to do, if anything, about a cooling climate.  At one point there was even a suggestion, in the 1960s, that perhaps the Air Force could be used to bast shipping passages in the event of increased polar ice through the use of atomic bombs, a rather frightening proposition to say the least.  In the early to mid 1980s, when I lived in Laramie the first time, the winters were so cold that there were weeks that didn't rise above 0F and once the snow set in, in the town, it simply remained there until the spring thaw, which was spiced by the sent of thawing dog crap that students had let built up in their yards all winter long.

So I have a fairly distinct recollection of earlier winters and perhaps that's why I found the recent reaction to the recent snow storm rather silly.

Now, I think the schools were right in shutting down in the regions of the state hit by the storms, and I don't blame them at all for that.  But individual reactions really caught me off guard.  A lot of people didn't go into work in some areas, although in the same areas, a lot of lifetime Wyomingites did.  I did, and I frankly didn't find the roads all that bad.  I was surprised when some people reacted by wondering if everyone would stay home when in fact everyone was already there.  Most locals were "no big deal". Indeed, I know of one employer who was likely to have taken the day off himself, being an import from somewhere else, who went to tell his employees to stay home only to find that he himself was the only one employed in that business who hadn't shown up on time.  He had to sheepishly go in.

Perhaps the most personally annoying, for a reason I'll note below, is the reaction of one of the person's in my neighborhood, however.

One of the really super nice people in my neighborhood whom I really like takes snow removal to an extreme.  I'll confess that I'm one of those people who don't come close to doing that, and as I have  busy schedule, I don't always get around to snow removal even when I should.  I knew the night prior to the big snow day that this would mean a big snow removal effort on his part. 

Well, sure enough, and when I went to work he stopped to talk to me and informed me that he was going to call the city to have the street plowed.

I don't really know if the city will plow a street simply because a resident requests it.  I really doubt it.  I hope they don't.  Something that average people probably don't appreciate much is that snow plowing efforts by cities are extremely expensive and a single storm can actually practically destroy a city's budget. 

Our city plows major through ways and that's all they need to do.  There's no reason whatsoever for a city to plow a residential street, save for the city's own purposes.  To make matters worse, our city plows to the center of the street which does keep cars from being plowed in but which also creates giant "windrows" which are a hazard in all sorts of ways. In residential streets, which aren't all that wide, it means that you really can't park in front of your house after they're created as there isn't room for cars to go buy after that.

Well, sure enough, when I got home the street had been plowed and there was a windrow with the width and elevation of the Himalayas in front of my house.  Sherpas had tried to make it over the top and had been frozen to death in their efforts.  Wild Yetis were roaming the windrows, and Indian and Pakistan were engaged in a fierce border fight over the windrow.

Okay, I exaggerate, but only a little.

That did mean that I could not park my Jeep in front of my house, thanks to the freaking windrow. 

Now I do have space. . . .barely, to park my Jeep in front of my travel trailer. . . when the weather is nice.  When I do that, I back into that space, carefully.  I tried to do that and found that the 1.5 feet of snow there meant I couldn't do it in one pass and had to go back and forth.  Finally, the Jeep slipped and the Jeep rack went into the bumper of my old Dodge D3500 parked there.  In pulling it forward, the rack was pretty badly damaged.

Great.

Now, I can't really blame the plowing on anyone.  I suspect that the city opened the street up in this fashion for its own purposes.  I really hope so.  But I'm really not happy about it.  I'll get over it, but now I have to debate on having a body shop repair my Jeep or having my brother in law weld up a cracked weld that developed after I bent my rack back into place.  He can do that, but he's busy, and it means driving out and taking away from his day to do that.  I doubt he has the time, and I know that I don't.

Wyoming has legendarily bad winter weather forever.  If you live here, and you want to drive, I figure you'll have a vehicle that anticipates that.  I was having no problem driving at all.  Nobody in my family, and they all drive, was. 

Sigh.