Blizzard of the Year

This past Wednesday we had, without a doubt, the best blizzard that we have seen since moving to the Arctic. To begin the day, the school day was called a "discretionary" day for students, which means that any student who was not at school had an excused absence. We had school for half the day, and for the first time since we have moved here, school was dismissed early because of the weather. The snow was pouring down and the wind was blowing at 40mph, with gusts up to 50mph. Of course, the visibility was listed as 0.00 feet on the weather page that we all use (Weather Underground). Michael and I walked home from school that afternoon, and it was actually quite amusing. We were very lucky that we know our walk home like the back of our hand, and that we were walking together, because we could hardly see anything. In fact, there were quite a few times when we just ran into snow drifts because we couldn't see them coming and ended up on our knees. One of our friends is about 6' 4" and the visibility was so bad that he ran smack into a snow drift face first without even seeing it coming. The winds blew all night, and here is what we opened our door to in the morning:

We opened our door to this:

Here is what we had to do to get out of our house (sorry it is sideways, I need to remember NOT to turn the camera!):

Here is the drift from the other side:


It is crazy what the wind does to the snow (this drift is about 8ft high):

I don't think our neighbors are going to be driving their car anytime soon:

On a side note, our landlord plowed the driveway in front of our house to make it a little easier for us to get down to the sidewalk. But, we had another blizzard yesterday and today, so the drift is right back to where it was. It will be another interesting walk to school tomorrow morning!