Saturday - October 29, 2011

Snow???? No!!!!

N.J. gets its first snowfall of the season

The fall foliage has added a new color to its palette in parts of northern New Jersey today: white.

Inch counts have risen and storm predictions have grown more dire throughout the day as snow began to fall throughout the region this morning. The National Weather Service has dubbed today’s Nor’easter an “historic early season snowstorm” for much of New Jersey, the Lower Hudson Valley and southern Connecticut.

The weather service reports that a low-pressure system off the coast of North Carolina was moving north, causing “a swath of heavy, wet and potentially damaging snow.”

The storm will pull out of the Mid-Atlantic region by evening and continue north to New England where Massachusetts’ Berkshires and the southern Green Mountains of Vermont could see between 10 and 15 inches of snow. Jersey should see its last flakes at around 10 p.m., officials said.

While predicting 2 to 4 inches earlier today, forecasters ratcheted up inch counts to a possible 6 to 10 inches for Morris, Hunterdon, Somerset, Sussex and Essex counties, as temperatures dropped to the lower 30’s and precipitation increased toward the afternoon hours.

I almost felt sorry for Peiper, coming home to a “cold and damp home”, except that it’s 24 degrees warmer where he is compared to here. Here in St. Clouds Hunterdon County, we’re having winter. Before Halloween.

WTF people, WTF. Sloppy white stuff started coming down here by 9am. By 11:30 we had about 3 inches on the ground, causing really bad driving conditions. Naturally I was out in it; my customer called with a “The front door won’t close and we need sidewalk salt really bad!” message. So I went down there, foolishly taking the back roads, which were white knuckle treacherous. Made it in only double the usual time. And wasn’t it just too much freakin’ fun coming down that steep hill into town, slipping sideways, with the anti-lock brakes going off constantly and making all sorts of strange noises? Thankfully that hill isn’t too long, with only one reverse camber curve above a deep drainage ditch, so I was able to get all the way down on what seemed like just one breath.

The customer had a whole 25lb bag of calcium salt under the sink in the bathroom. Bastige. So I shoveled the walkways and salted. Then I fixed the door, which is a metal frame bit of junk in a cinderblock wall, so it always needs to be raised up in the fall when it contracts, and then lowered in the spring so that the bugs don’t crawl in underneath when it expands. And I’m out doing that in the rainy snowy mix, with great clumps of the mess falling down from the roof all around me. It’s only a 15 minute job, but it’s still a P.I.T.A., made worse by today’s weather. We took the main road home after waiting 20 minutes to get some gas. People just shift into turbo-stupid mode when the weather hits, and the gas station was a frickin’ zoo. Assmunch 2 cars up the line filled his truck, then it’s auxiliary tank, then half a dozen 5 gallon jerry cans full. Yeah, like he’s not going to be able to get gas for a week. Hoser. OTOH, he might be right. Power is failing all across the state as the sloppy mess builds up on trees that still have their leaves and brings them down across the wires. We’ve even lost power here in Clinton a couple times, and all our lines are underground. Not enough to reset the clocks, but just enough to cause the PC to reboot. Gak, one of these days I am going to break down and get another UPS. I have one, but right now it’s connected to the TV and DVR downstairs.

We tried to take the main road back home, but it was a total jam, bumper to bumper. Nothing was moving other than the police and fire vehicles, as they responded to traffic accident after traffic accident. Bad weather to be out driving in! So we ducked into the local Longhorne for an extended lunch, and hung out there eating and chatting with the wait staff for nearly 2 hours. That gave the county a chance to get out the plows and the salt trucks and fix the roads at least somewhat. So the rest of the drive home wasn’t easy, but it was smooth sailing compared to going down there.

At this point I’m poking around in the fridge looking for a beer, but not finding one I’ll settle for a coffee. Then a nap sounds good.

We’ve had at least 4 inches of slop at this point, but it’s so wet it compacts pretty fast so it’s hard to tell. Every couple of minutes we hear another swoosh, thump! as another mini-avalanche lets go from the roof. And it’s still coming down pretty hard.

And I’ve got an outside window job lined up for tomorrow morning. Oy vey.

Give yourself a 2 point bonus if you recognized the “Here in St. Clouds” reference straight off. Eh Homer? Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England!

Posted by Drew458     on 10/29/2011 at 02:35 PM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •  
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