12:00 noon. Almost serene.
A gentle, innocuous squall blew through about 18 hours before the forewarned National Weather Service Blizzard Warning, scheduled to start at 3:00pm. This resulted in an approximate two-inch snowfall.
Le Plat Principal
9:00pm. An intended snapshot of the huge snowdrift that
devoured the steps leading to the main door of my apartment
building, this is what happened to my lens within seconds
of removing the lens cap.
About an hour and a half before the Blizzard Warning went into effect, the breeze grew teeth and velocity. A half-hour before the scheduled time, the light, friendly flakes of snow became knife-edged throwing stars hurtling at me horizontally.
The view from my living room. I couldn't go out on the bal-
cony because the wind was so fierce that it would blow snow
into my living room. So I shot it through the sliding glass
door, window schmutz be damned.
Just as it turned bad, and I figured I was done for the day (save my energy for tomorrow), I was in heavy traffic where there usually is no heavy traffic. Dispatch sent me a fare the pickup address of which just happened to be about 200 yards from my location. But, as my luck would have it, the guy wanted to go to Chicago. The southwest side. Normally I would delight in such good fortune, but the roads were already backed up, and the Blizzard Warning had only been in effect for about 30 minutes.
For as bad a turn as my fortune just taken, it was worse for my passenger: he had just had a last-straw argument with his pregnant girlfriend, and he loaded several bags into the taxi cab's trunk. After one attempt to see if she would let him stay, we trundled on our way.
Two and a half hours later I dropped him and his stuff at his sister's home on the southwest side. I was done with my day, I had decided; now I just needed to get back home. The time was 6:30pm.
I almost got stuck at the curb in front of the house, but I made it away. The storm worsened as I headed northwest, with thick carpets of unplowed snow grabbing at my tires and attempting to steer me into my fellow motorists. Near my home, I stopped and filled the tank, getting in the way of the concerted snow plowing effort being undertaken at the gas station.
Driving the last mile-and-a-half to my home was the worst of the whole trip in the thick, fluffy frosting that blew and drifted along the roadside and reached ribbons across the roadway.
In a very odd coincidence, I heard the radio announcer at the all-news station in Chicago say that Barrington Road was now closed from Higgins Road, north to Algonquin Road, just as I crossed Higgins Road, northbound on Barrington Road. I reached the intersection of Barrington Road and the road on which I live, and almost got completely bogged down right next to a police department SUV that was there to "close" Barrington Road, even though traffic seemed to be passing by unfettered. "What a CROCK!" I thought, having driven more than sixty miles in ever worsening conditions, to get stuck six blocks from my home! But, fortunately, I kept my tires spinning, and I made it through the intersection and, finally, home.
The storm is as bad as everyone predicted. As of this writing, it ain't over yet!
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It goes without saying that I bet you were glad you weren't hanging out on Lakeshore Dr....
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