Like this:

It’s been called “Snowpocalypse,” “Snowmageddon,” and “Thundersnow.” Whatever it was, it dumped something like 18 inches of the fluffy white stuff, and, according to Weather.com,  was accompanied by winds of 51 miles per hour. It was insane.

My school boasts that it hasn’t ever closed due to inclimate  weather in any of the current staff’s recollection, and the district my wife teaches in hasn’t had a snow-day in over a decade; mind you, we do get quite a lot of snow up here. Both schools closed early yesterday and cancelled classes today before the storm even hit (she still has class off tomorrow because apparently the temperature is now plummeting well below zero and there’s some degree of fear of children freezing while waiting for their respective buses?).

We hunkered into our little fortress (apartment) yesterday afternoon, and though we had intended to watch a movie together, ended up spending large amounts of time simply staring out the window, watching the storm as though it were a fireplace. It was the single-most powerful weather event I’ve witnessed and not slept through.

When we awoke today we were greeted by these images (which we then took pictures of):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok, to be fair, one of those was our breakfast, but I felt it still bore mentioning…

Here’s a before and after shot of the walkway to our apartment, showing how we were quite literally snowed-in. Luckily the apartment grounds keepers had us nice and dug out by around noon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then there was the matter of digging our cars out… This proved to be a pain in the butt (“snowing-pains?”) lasting around 2 hours because shortly after I finished the digging, the parking lot was finally plowed for the first time of the day (2:ooish?) and/or my (insert profane moniker) of a neighbor took to digging his wife’s car out. Between the two of them, they redistributed a LOT of snow behind our cars, forcing me to once again dig out our vehicles. Needless to say, after the ordeal, I was a little bit exhausted (“snow-tired”?). My west-coast readers may not know that each year (and doubtless today) hundreds of fat midwesterners die of heart-attacks while shoveling snow: it’s a surprisingly taxing endeavor. Here’s what I was up against:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While shoveling the first time I became somewhat contemplative. We’ve gotten so good (especially in the midwest) of overcoming the tricks up nature’s sleeve: snow plows and salt trucks running round the clock, all weather tires and meteorologic predictions (albeit routinely inaccurate ones). It’s big-business keeping nature at bay so that life goes on unaffected. When a storm causes this much of a hiccup in your routine, it’s worth thinking on. There is something almost valuable in having to respond to nature in this way. I think I felt something close to the sort of humility farmers have felt for eons as their careers and lives are largely dependent on the whims of meteorological fate. There was something satisfying about digging my car out. Perhaps is in part due to the lack of oxygen reaching my brain as my poor heart struggled to keep pace with my shoveling and teeth-clenching, but it felt almost good to be reminded where exactly I stood in the grander scheme of things. Despite our modern comforts and the like, we’re still at the mercy of quite a lot of external forces.

Makes me thankful to know I’m loved by a caring and wildly powerful God, methinks.

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