WineLovers Discussion Group

Yay! We're snowed in and it's still snowing (7" so far). No dentist appt and we can't get to work. Edie's car is stashed on a side street near her office and I rescued her last night while I still could. Hiways thru Albuquerque are closed and the city streets are a base of solid ice with a new overnight layer of snow.

Now, what to cook? Probably bread. Perhaps tamales (I picked up a Mark Miller cookbook about tamales yesterday at the library).

Larry Greenly wrote:...Now, what to cook? ...

Sounds like time to raid the freezer and make a pot of soup!

I stayed home yesterday and made a pot of beef stew and a couple loaves of bread.

Just talked to folks at my workplace and there is no way I can get there up the side of the mountain... even if I could make it through the Pass. We had snow, then a layer of ice, then more snow. (I could drive it, but the other people out here have no idea how and, man, talk about putting your life in someone else's hands!)

Hmm. Maybe a Mexican chicken soup today.

Friends in ABQ are really enjoying the novelty of this storm.

Cynthia Wenslow wrote:Friends in ABQ are really enjoying the novelty of this storm.

Yeah, this happens only occasionally. I'm snowed in and I'm not going anywhere, and better yet, my wife can't go to work. A snow day in the middle of the week! The mourning doves are enjoying my bird seed.

I've got some bread working, but I don't know what I'll make for tonight. I'm contemplating Asian, Filipino, Mexican or just plain ol' Murkan. And right now, I'm drinking lapsang souchong tea--the perfect day for it.

Snowed in ... in New Mexico? Isn't that amazing ... a way up here in Toronto there is not a snowflake in sight, temperatures are mild and we have a straight run of mild weather already for about a week. I even think we are headed for a green Christmas.

NM is an incredibly varied state, although most people who haven't been here think of pure desert.

I consider myself "based" in Santa Fe, but actually live 30 miles away on the east slopes of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, where it is comparatively lush and green... and moist. In summer I even have a yard with grass and a garden, both without watering them myself.

We get snowed in about 6 - 10 times a winter up here in the northern mountains. (And this is an El Nino year which brings us much more snow than usual.)

It hasn't happened too often down in ABQ in the 7 years I've lived here, although, like here, their east mountains get hit a lot more than the city proper.

My family in WNY are all whining and complaining saying I have their snow. Well, I'm not giving it up! So there!

Larry Greenly wrote: And right now, I'm drinking lapsang souchong tea--the perfect day for it.

I've consumed a fair bit of vanilla hazelnut tea the last two days. There is something comforting about tea that I don't get from coffee during this kind of weather.

I went out in the middle of the day and cleared off my car and moved snow from the drive... but you can't tell now.

[quote="Larry Greenly"]Yay! We're snowed in and it's still snowing (7" so far). [quote]


Seven inches and snowed in? Puh-leez! I've seen 48 inches in a weekend and we STILL had school . But this winter, still no snow...



Prost!
Bill

I lived in flat Minneapolis (Bloomington, to be exact) and experienced my share of blizzards, cars that wouldn't start, frozen gas, and door handles that broke off in my hand. I even walked uphill both ways to school. But I once experienced a blizzard here in Albuquerque in the mid-90s that was equivalent to a typical one in Minn-e-soooota.

I also remember snowstorms in Pennsylvania that left snow literally higher than cars and we'd be driving through pseudo-tunnels of snow without roofs. One time the small town I lived in was cut off from civilization for 3 days due to a blizzard (the snowplows couldn't even get through from Phildelphia).

If you lived here, you would understand the problems this storm brought. It totally shut down I-25 and I-40 (the main East-West highway across the country). The 7 inches of powder snow (up to 12 inches a few blocks east of us) lies on top of solid ice (the preliminary snow melted, then froze overnight). Even police cars were in accidents. Driving across town from west to east on ice is difficult because there's a 2000 ft gain in altitude from 4500 to 6500 feet.

It's also difficult to walk in it. My wife fell a few times because of the ice while walking to her friend's house after she had to abandon her car. People here don't have a clue how to drive in it. And we also don't have the infrastructure like in Minneapolis to get rid of the snow. With another freeze tonight, it'll be interesting to see what the roads are like tomorrow.

It was wonderful to have a day off. I made a big pot of Texas-style chili and some homemade bread. The only time I opened the door was to feed the birds. And my dental appt was postponed because the dental office was shut down.

I was in Worcester, MA for the famous Blizzard of 1978. Don Kent, at the time the premier meteorologist in Boston, made one of his few major gaffes when he forecast snow flurries, which meant that everyone stayed at work until late afternoon. By the middle of the afternoon commute, over a foot of "flurries" had fallen on the metro Boston area, and white-out blizzard conditions prevailed, completely snarling traffic. When the snow finally stopped falling 24 hours later, Boston was buried under three feet of snow, and the more westerly parts of Massachusetts, such as Worcester, had four feet of snow, drifting to six feet or more. The major highways in the state were shut down for weeks as they dug out the cars that were abandoned on the major arteries and ring roads around Boston. Worcester piled up the snow that the city dug off of the roads into an enormous pile along the bank of the Blackstone River. It didn't completely melt away until June.

So far this winter in New Hampshire, we've had about half an hour of attempted snow flurries that melted away in another half an hour.

-Paul W.

Then there was Buffalo's Blizzard of '77. It was supposed to be a fast moving storm that was going to hit the area and move on quickly. However, with 4 feet of snow plus another 3 feet blowing off a frozen Lake Erie with 75 mph and temps well below zero, the storm lasted 4 days and declaring the area a national disaster was Jimmy Carter's first presidential act after being inaugarated. 47 people killed in that event, some weren't found until weeks later, buried in snow banks.

I was in high school during that one, Howie. It made a deep and lasting impression on me.

During the NE blizzard or '78 we lived in Portsmouth NH. The plows left a seven foot drift in our driveway. I'm 6'2" and it was well over my head. Will some help from my then very young daughters we got it all cleared out and then, you guessed it, the plow came by again. Before I could go into the house and get my trusty revolver for my head, a town owned front end loader came by and scooped out the drive for us. Quite a storm.

Carl Eppig (Middleton, NH wrote:... a town owned front end loader came by and scooped out the drive for us. Quite a storm.

Sometimes these events bring out the best in people.

[quote=[/quote]Sometimes these events bring out the best in people. [/quote]

Not the people in the house where Edie had to abandon her car. Tuesday night, driving home from work, it was so icy she had to pull off into a side street and park her car.

I planned to rescue the car the following morning, but it snowed a lot more and the city was pretty much shut down. So we had a snow day, which was quite a treat.

Thursday morning, after the NM sun finally came out, the roads returned pretty much to normal. I drove her to work, stopping along the way, to retrieve her car.

Under all the snow was a red tag (abandoned vehicle) and a parking ticket. We had reached our car probably within an hour of it getting the ticket, thanks to the nearby homeowner (who I had a few words with after banging on her door). 36 hours of parking during a dangerous snowstorm and it's an abandoned vehicle?

Fast forward: there was no way I was going to pay a ticket, so I traced the officer (actually a public service aide) who had tagged the car. He told me the homeowner had said the car had been there "for a while." Anyway, he agreed to tear up the ticket.

One can only hope that woman gets stuck in a blizzard somewhere like we almost did in the worst one I was ever in: the blizzard of '84 (sounds like an old timer, doesn't it?).

I was driving from Pennsylvania through Chicago to Minneapolis on New Year's Eve. It started to snow in Chicago. By the time we reached the western part of Illinois it was a full-fledged blizzard, snowing horizontally and the highway wasn't even visible under the drifts of snow.

At the time, my brother lived in Rockport so I turned off and headed in that direction. Virtually no one was driving, but every once in a while I'd see a lump that was a car. To make it more interesting, my car started running rough and finally died. I thought we might have to go on foot to some nearby farmhouse.

I popped the hood and discovered the wind had blown a lot of snow into the engine compartment and plugged up the air cleaner. I cleaned that out and got the engine running again, but it was still running rough. By the time I reached my brother's garage the car was literally running on 1 or 2 cylinders.

The next day the car wouldn't even start. I took a look and discovered that one set of ignition points had broken apart and the other was completely closed. How the car had run at all the night before is still beyond me.

Naturally, being New Year's Day, there were no auto stores open, so I removed the broken points and did some miniature blacksmithing to repair them. After adjusting the other set so they would actually open, I got the car running again and headed toward Minnesota.

Of course, in Wisconsin, my locking fuel door had frozen and I didn't have any de-icer left and the fuel station didn't have any (I couldn't believe it). I don't remember how I finally got it open, but we did finally make it to Minneapolis. Yay!

I remember it well: the blizzard of '84.

I was in New Orleans in 1990 when it snowed for the first time in over 40 years. You should have seen people try to drive in the French Quarter. Since all the water pipes are above ground, they burst and the entire city's water pressure was unable to cope for over a week.

Snow brings out the hearty stew and soup gene in me.....

Snowed in, eh?

Hope you have plenty of wine on hand

TimMc wrote:Snowed in, eh?

Hope you have plenty of wine on hand

Over 200 bottles.

Larry Greenly wrote:

TimMc wrote:Snowed in, eh?

Hope you have plenty of wine on hand

Over 200 bottles.

So what will you do if the storm goes into a third day?

A gentleman never tells.

It's raining here in Austin, TX. I want snow

On Christmas eve day my neighbor was wishing for rain to melt away our snow. What a scrooge.

Larry Greenly wrote:

TimMc wrote:Snowed in, eh?

Hope you have plenty of wine on hand

Over 200 bottles.

200 bottles?

Let get my Cross-Country skis....