***My 24-Second Blizzard Video***
Here is a piece of advice for each of you who drives down my street and at some point gets stuck: stay home. Where are you going, to pick up some maple syrup for your Saturday morning pancakes?
It's snowing here, a lot, already at least a foot already with six more hours to come. It is snowing hard, one to two inches per hour, those in the know say.
When I lived in Tahoe, being that lake level is at 6,250 feet, it snowed a ton, about 125 inches per year. At the higher elevations, that number measures at 500 inches. For comparison, the Twin Cities comes in at about 45 inches per year. What we are having here today in the Twin Cities is what I recall as being a typical bona-fide snowstorm in Tahoe. We really didn't shrug if a snow was predicted to be less than a foot, to be honest. Snowplows in the form of road graders are abundant (they don't call snow emergencies there, they simply plow when it snows. Imagine that!), South Lake Tahoe itself is relatively flat, and studded tires and/or all-wheel/four-wheel drive took care of the rest. Aside from an epic storm that dumped six feet in 24 hours on us, I don't recall ever having my in-town travel adversely affected severely.
Now, for one winter, after I almost had a cap put in my ass at my in-town cabin and just had to move, I lived in Gardnerville, Nevada, which is over and down the mountain, a Sierra foothills community. It rests at about 4,700 feet above sea level, and to get from Tahoe to Gardnerville, you have to climb to Dagget Pass (elevation 7,334) and descend to Carson Valley. This is a nine percent grade on the way down, and all the way it is a winding two-lane highway that does not meet modern road specs.
So, don't drive it during a blizzard, right? Well, no. The thing of it is, a large number of people who work in Tahoe live in the Carson Valley, and with snow occurring so frequently, you essentially sign up for very treacherous commutes. For the six months I lived in the Valley (I always worked in Tahoe), I made numerous horrific commutes. I drove a 1984 Saab 900T back in that day, and it was equipped with studded tires (purchased at Les Schwab Tires in Carson City, where you get free beef!), and while grip generally wasn't a problem, clearance could be another story. During a typical blizzard, visibility was wicked bad. I remember one trip in particular that was far and away the most insane driving conditions I ever embarked upon. Triple the time as normal, I made it, and honestly I decided it was one of the dumbest things I'd ever done.
The beauty of landing in the Valley is that frequently, it isn't even snowing there while Tahoe is getting pounded. It's like a little party when you hit the Valley floor. On the flip side, some days you'd be basking in sunny 50 degree weather in the Valley, only to hit a big ol' snowstorm as you got higher on the grade heading to Tahoe.
Work beckoned, so we had to make some difficult trips. Living down there was not an acceptable excuse for not showing up to work. Too many people lived down there, and if they all called in on such days . . . well you can visualize the problem for a busy casino operation.
For that reason, I strongly empathize and sympathize with people who have to work today. Many places have closed, including the entire University of Minnesota campus in about a half-hour, so that undoubtedly gives many a reprieve from having to venture out. Hotel workers and the like though, well they're just screwed. The good thing about hotels is that they have lodging at their disposal, so perhaps that's an option for their hard workers. Tahoe casino/hotels would occasionally offer that option to their workers: Stay the night. I believe it was free, but if not it was dirt cheap. I never did that, stayed at the hotel overnight.
As I type this, the University of Minnesota men's basketball team is playing, in town. Surprisingly, there is a decent crowd there. I was entertaining the idea of heading to the U of M hockey game tonight, but mercifully it is postponed. If I could even get there, it would take four or five times the normal amount of travel time.
A quick shout-out to both cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, for calling snow emergencies this morning rather than waiting till the snow stops, as they usually do. Residential plowing starts at about nine o'clock tonight, and word on the street is that plows are already out working on arterial streets. This is one very valid use of our tax dollars, in my view.
Down on the farm, each time it rains, people get on the phone. How much rain did you get? It's a must-know for everyone in a rural area. I venture that today Minnesota phone circuits and towers are busy, and I imagine they will get even busier once the snow stops. How much snow did you get? The question at the moment though is, when will it stop?
