Feb 022011
 

The blizzard began in late afternoon on February 1, 2011, following a pretty heavy snowfall that just ended that same morning.  Unlike the “1/2 inch blizzard” we had earlier in the season, this one felt like a real blizzard: lots of snow, lots of wind, really interesting to be outside.

Tradition would have it that our blizzard party would be followed by a midnight shovelling experience.  But we were getting too tired already, so we went outside somewhere between 10:00 and 10:30 p.m.

Here’s a first-hand look at the storm…

About 9:30 a.m. on February 2, I headed out to see the effects.  The video that follows is shot from the garage.  There’s clear driveway where the wind whipped around the corner of the garage and blew the snow away.  You also see a drift right outside the garage, and the snow at the end of the driveway, courtesy of the snow plow.

The next video, shot just moments later, gets out near the street for a look back to the house as well as a closer shot of the snow in the driveway.

Finally, here’s a view in the street with the kids digging a fort into a snow bank and then a view of the neighborhood.  A few neighbors are still working to clear their driveways 4 hours after we began.

Hey, this is Wisconsin!  We’re supposed to have a good snow storm from time to time.  OK now, where’s the ibuprofen?

Sep 062010
 

This morning we had a bit of a hail storm.  I’ve seen hail from a storm before, but this was really just hail.  Lots of hail.  Sure I’ve seen pictures and video on the weather channel or the news of amazing accummulations of hail in other storms, but this was pretty unusual in my experience.

The storm was probably a little after 8:00 a.m. local time.  It only lasted a few minutes.

Here are two videos.  The first shows the hail falling, hitting the ground, the grill, and the patio.

The second video shows hail on ground in front yard and two nice size hail stones that Victoria picked up.

It took 30 minutes or more for all the hail to melt.  The most obvious sign after the hail melted was the leaves down around every tree in the city.  It looked like trees were losing their leaves for the fall, only the leaves on the ground were still green.