Did you hear? We received snow… a lot of snow. This shouldn’t be too surprising since this is the state of Minnesota but we always get a little concerned when two and a half feet of snow pile on in one day. This lead to all sorts of fun and games.
First the roads obviously became practically impossible to drive on. I’m not talking a little difficult, I’m talking so bad that the country pulled the snow plows off of the streets. The local metro buses halter operations leaving at least one of my friends stranded at work. Local light rail was bogged down because of the additional passengers and the accumulation of snow on the rails. The Minneapolis airport shut down for a while until they were able to get one runway going partially (they would run it for half and hour, spend 20 minutes clearing it off again, then run it for another half hour). Something akin to 600 people went off of the road throughout the state. Hell the mail wasn’t even delivered in some areas. Basically it was a bad snow storm here in Minnesota.
Summing it up in words really doesn’t do it justice so here are pictures. Everybody on my Facebook feed was also talking about something related to vikings. I’m not sure what they meant but I think it was this song:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_gf0Btwp5E]
On a positive note when snow like this falls Minnesotans usually come together to assist one another. I think everybody I know helped at least two other motorists dig their vehicles out (I almost did but the guy I was going to help was a rude asshole so I left him there). Neighbors with snow blowers went to clear the driveways of their neighbors who had only shovels. A lot of people went on retrieval missions to get friends and families unstuck. And of course everybody enjoyed the pleasure of the police being unable to enforce many stupid laws (for instance a fun sport when the police are stuck and unable to respond is to get on a snowboard, hook up to a four wheel drive vehicle, and go wake boarding).
It’s weather like this that also reminds me why I drive a truck. Yeah my Ranger only gets 17.5 miles per gallon on the highway but when you kick it into four wheel drive that truck will tear through almost anything. Having roughly nine inches of ground clearance also helps.
The entire event can be summed up with the following phrase, global warming is bullshit (seriously when can we get some of that sweet sweet global warming?) and fuck you Al Gore for getting our hopes up!