It was a dark and stormy night...

Conditions at 4:30 am: a little windy and just flurries at the moment and -6'
Expected later: no more snow and a high of -5' - in other words, what we see is what we'll get

...and seems to be continuing this morning. I woke up at 4:00 and all I could hear was the wind howling outside. I have no idea what it looks like beyond the back yard. I know we got quite a bit of snow, but not sure if it was as much as predicted. When I left work last night there was several inches of fluffy new snow on the ground that would blow around quite nicely once the wind picked up.

It doesn't look like it's snowing very much now but it's too dark to tell yet what the roads look like (or the driveway for that matter). The ride home wasn't really too bad. It was very snowy and visibility wasn't great but there was no wind so white outs were not an issue. Once I got past the store, there were no tire tracks, and it didn't appear that the plows had made it yet, so it was a little tricky to tell where the road actually was, but I just took my time and had no troubles.Apparently Brenda was very close behind me, coming back from town, and needless to say we both decided it best to just stay in for the night. It gave me the opportunity to get my suitcase packed (or at least started).

Every day I am reminded what a small place this is.Yesterday I drove a young man over to a car dealership. He was working at a body shop in Donagh and had dropped off a vehicle for us and needed a lift to somewhere else to pick up another vehicle to take back out there. We got to talking about the roads and wondering what they would be like later in the day, and I mentioned that I lived in the Dromore area. He asked if I knew Sheila Christie. It took me a couple of seconds to make the connection and I said, not really well, but she was at my house last night. Turns out he was good friends with her kids growing up.

I talked to Lloyd yesterday and they were given the option of coming in to work or not. I watched the Toronto news last night and it looks like it wasn't as bad as predicted there although they did get 17 cm of snow in the city. But Great Gulf is building in Guelph now and he had some things he could do there, so made the choice not to go in to the office. I suspect no one did. I saw on the Guelph radio station web site that just about everything was shut down in that city as well. Even Patti's kids school closed - which doesn't happen too often as they have no buses to worry about.

I was thinking about it last night on my way home, as I listened to the soothing music of Jesse Cook, rather than the radio telling me how bad the driving was, and I realized something. Years ago, we had lots worse weather, and more often than we do now. I think the technology of knowing what's coming so far in advance is not necessarily a good thing. We didn't have the fancy gadgets or big cars. We just got into whatever we drove, and dealt with it. If road conditions were bad, we slowed down. Now it seems we panic when we see a storm coming and often times the build up is much worse than the event. Everyone gets so worked up about it. In past years, if you woke up in the morning to a big pile of snow, you just went out and shoveled it. Then you made your way to work. We didn't stress about it for hours in advance. We have indeed become a bunch of wimps when it comes to the weather.

Having said that, I'm going to go and get dressed and head outside to see what lies ahead. I HAVE to make it to work this morning. I'm hoping that they will let me take the shuttle home when the ladies are here so I can give them my car. I can't be taking any more snow days if I want that to happen!

One note though, my next big expenditure for the house will have to be a new storm door for the back porch to replace the one that got ripped off last year. When I opened the door this morning to let the dog out, there was a foot of snow piled up against the door so as soon as he jumped out, a large part of the snow came in. A new storm door is definitely the next priority!