Well.

On Friday, meterologists atarted releasing severe weather warnings for Southern Alberta, mostly in the area of Calgary (where I live). The last few weekdays had been characterized by heavy rain, which is rare enough for this part of the world, and a forecasted drop in temperature for the weekend did not bode well.

Saturday morning, the snow started. Temperatures hovered just below freezing, and so the snow started much earlier in the north part of the city. (Prevailing winds blow south here, and the city is large enough that the changes in temperature from the city itself can often cause storm systems to dump most of their precipitation at the north end, petering out near downtown.) By about nine o'clock in the morning, however, the entire city was facing blizzard conditions.

Making matters worse, the snow was very wet throughout the city, and the large amounts of it in the north caused many problems. Traffic lights were out everywhere, many communities lost power (including the one immediately southeat of where I live), cable television service went down, and accidents abounded. Well over a hundred accidents were reported and responded to, and over twenty of those involved injuries. Six cases of people having heart attacks while shovelling the heavy snow were reported, and one of those was fatal.

At two-thirty in the morning, a hit-and-run accident was reported. Passersby offered assistance to the victim, but she later died in hospital.

On a more personal note, I made an attempt to get out of my driveway to go to the second service at my church this morning. The police service had stopped issuing warnings to stay home if at all possible, and I had read reports that most major roadways had been cleared. Unfortunately, the company that is responsible for clearing the snow at my condo complex had not been through yet, and I don't own a shovel.

I cleared the ten to twelve inches of wet, heavy snow off of my car without too much trouble -- as wet is it was, it slid right off. I assessed the pile of snow between my car and the roadway (which had deep ruts in it, although it hadn't been cleared properly) and figured I could make it. I was wrong.

With only one of me, I wasn't able to get the car unstuck on my own. I was almost out of my driveway, but not far enough out to block most traffic, but I figured I should at least get back to where I started. Unfortunately, I managed to make things worse before they got better. I knew that I needed to rock the car without spinning the tires if I was to have any chance, because spinning the tires would only form ice (skip lecture on phase behaviour of water here) even under these warm conditions. Unfortunately, rocking the car in reverse, going uphill, with a manual transmission, was not as easy as I would have liked.

Eventually, I took a break from the pattern of alternately rocking the car and trying to see if I could push it a bit to come inside and call frum's wife to tell her I would not be picking her up for church after all. When I went back out, two gentlemen in a van labelled "24-hour help service" (or something like that -- I didn't look closely) came along and offered to push while I drove, and we got the car moved pretty much immediately. I got their further assistance in moving the car right into the garage so that snow could be removed more effectively from the driveway when the time came, and came inside.

Unfortunately, my grandmother is in town right now, and I had made plans to see her this afternoon. As it stands, I don't think this will be happening. Perhaps I'll get to see her tomorrow night. If things don't change soon, I'm not sure I'll even make it to work tomorrow. If the snow picks up again overnight, I don't think anyone will. (Right now it is falling lightly, but still falling nonetheless. The forecasted high for today is 1 ºC, or about 34 ºF -- not likely to melt much of the snow.)

Even as I'm thinking about these events, I remember that the dump of snow we have had over the last couple of days has been miniscule compared to what Atlantic Canada (especially Newfoundland) received this winter. I have a newfound appreciation for what they went through.

Don Monkey