The Great Blizzard of 2010: It&#8217;s Baaaack!
<p>So, if you entertained any thought the <a href="http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1660">Great Blizzard of 2010</a> was Gaia dancing a mocking reel on the heads of the AGW crowd&#8230;she&#8217;s back to tread out a hornpipe, a polka, and a rigadoon.  The mid-Atlantic coast is now experiencing a <em>second</em> record-setting snowstorm  just five days after the first one.  Once again: we are snowed in, we are OK, the fridge is still well supplied, and the cat is still fuzzy.</p>
<p>Washington D.C. is now long past seeing its seasonal record for snow shattered. City authorities appear to have plain given up.  The Federal government is shut down.  (Yay!)  Philadelphia is pretty much shut down too and nobody thinks it&#8217;s going to be any better off tomorrow.  As I write we&#8217;ve got three feet on the ground in Malvern and more coming down fast; the trench I dug from our door to the driveway this morning has already filled in.  </p>
<p>Last time around Malvern was 30-50 miles north of the worst-hit areas.  This time, if I can go by what I saw on the weather maps, we had the bull&#8217;s-eye painted on us.  The wind&#8217;s not as stiff as it was in Round One, but I think the snow is actually accumulating faster this time. Between the weekend&#8217;s snow and the new stuff I think we might crack the five-foot mark here.</p>
<p>The serious-damage threshold has already been crossed.  Some friends of ours about a mile and a half away own a hot tub that sits under a light wooden-and-plexiglass gazebo.  <em>Used</em> to sit under it, I should say; the roof collapsed today.  Internet service is getting slow and flaky; I&#8217;ve had a couple episodes of being unable to reach even Google today.  Pandora Radio is, unsurprisingly and with no blame to them, dropping out a lot.   I&#8217;m thinking some of the core routers in the D.C./Baltimore area have probably crapped out.</p>
<p>I made another ginormous pancakes-and-bacon breakfast for us this morning. Wasn&#8217;t as much fun this time.  And had to do almost all the shovelling myself, as Cathy slightly pulled something in her right hip over the weekend and I was <em>not</em> about to let her re-injure herself. Not that shovelling&#8217;s done a lot of good, anyway; as I noted, the snow has filled already in this morning&#8217;s trench to the driveway,  Getting all the way to the road isn&#8217;t going to be pleasant.</p>
<p>Overall, this is starting to suck.  Not seriously, yet, but the trend is not good.  Um, about that global warming, could I actually have some, please?  The cocoa is holding out, but we&#8217;re down to our last slice of pumpkin pie here, man!</p>
