The nightly news on 2 January showed the lines of plows and salt trucks ready for the expected storm. The first inkling that things weren’t going to go as planned was the announcement that no road pretreatment could be done since the storm started as moderate to heavy rain. By dawn the temperature dropped and the rain turned to heavy wet snow. It came down for most of the morning at rates of up to two inches an hour. We weren’t worried at the TTG household. We didn’t have to go anywhere and we could hunker down with what he had on hand for at least a week.
The heavy wet snow did a job on the power lines. As the morning progress the number of those without power in Stafford grew to more than 30,000. I was feeling pretty good with only a few power flickers when we finally joined the ranks of the powerless at noon. No sweat I thought. We have a gas generator that I’ll roll out later in the afternoon if I had to. I had to. I’m still on generator power in this all electric house. No heat pump, stove or water heater, but I have two small radiant heaters which keeps the house livable. We have “city water” rather than a well and pump so no problem there. My sons in Alexandria and Richmond fared much better. They didn’t lose power and weren’t in the direct path of the heaviest snow. Also, they both have the good sense to stay off the roads in these conditions.
The big story was the utter failure on I-95. There was a fifty mile traffic standstill that wasn’t cleared up until this afternoon. The traffic on this section of I-95 is very often a nightmare even when the weather is fine. All it took was one or two jack knifed tractor trailers and it was all over. The snow piled up, traffic couldn’t move and plows couldn’t plow. Apparently there was no contingency plan to close down the road to allow plows to clear the snow as I’ve seen done on interstates in the Northeast. State police would stop traffic to allow a phalanx of plows to clear the highway in one pass. This process would be repeated as needed. Your choice was to stay the hell off the roads or sit in your car, shut up and wait.
Seems in these times, people are not to be denied their freedom to travel where they want, when they want. Everybody and their brother just had to be somewhere else on Tuesday, so they all piled on I-95. A lot of them got to spend all night on I-95. Thankfully no one died in this mass expression of freedom.
Tomorrow I’ll start clearing limbs brought down by the snow. My neighbor’s driveway is blocked and I think I can clear it myself. The retired CSM is pushing 90 and has already cheated death a few times. He doesn’t need to be clearing trees from his driveway. I also got to clear a big downed limb from one of his pines that’s laying up in my cherry tree. My cherry tree will be getting plenty of sun this spring. That’s something to look forward to.
TTG
Our internet was out until 2000 tonight but never lost power.
A piece broke off a willow tree in the back garden and is hanging across some wires. Will get it down tomorrow. Hoping that the weight doesn’t do any damage before then.
You ought to have a good cherry crop if you can get to it before the crows. Make some brandy. The Lithuanian Club in Southie used to serve a moonshine cherry brandy. I’ve tried to make it from my Rainier cherry tree. But on the coast of Washington we don’t always get springtime sun. And we rarely meet the winter chill needed for a good harvest. So I usually just get enough to use as a topper on SWMBO’s ice cream.
The Pine – more firewood for next winter? We never quite run out, something big always falls.
I fueled our generator up and checked its oil this morning – our issue is tropical thunderstorms tonight.
“Apparently there was no contingency plan to close down the road to allow plows to clear the snow as I’ve seen done on interstates in the Northeast.”
In the decade and a half I lived in Michigan I never saw the road closed to allow plows to clear the interstate. I’ve seen snowstorms a lot worse than this, too. I was impressed, however, with the skill with which Senator Kaine managed to stage an ‘impromptu’ news meeting on his arrival at the capital after being stuck on the highway overnight (in his fossil fuel powered car). He was right about one thing, you can’t pretreat the road for ice and snow while it’s raining.
“Seems in these times, people are not to be denied their freedom to travel where they want, when they want…”
God bless America, where we still have freedom of movement, even on the second workday of the new year. Now about that climate change, why wasn’t Virginia’s US Senator not driving an electric car? In fact why was he driving that far at all?
Now that you have some real snow may I suggest a break from the yard clearing for the important things. Building a snowman, or having a snowball fight? Cheers from (looks outside) sunny Florida.
Should we assume those fired New Jersey “Bridgegate” traffic employees ended up getting hired by Virginia Dept of Transportation.
Why are we paying full time government employees to do so little in return? Props to Elizabeth Warren. At least she claimed “she had a plan” for everything. Put the evacuation of I-95 right up there with Biden’s evacuation plans of Afghanistan.
Deap,
No, and do you have any idea how snow plows and associated equipment is stage by county road crews Or what equipment and staff might actually be available in that part of Virginia?
Or making angels…in the snow…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXRWZXPf_d8
Glad to hear you made it safe…
There is nothing wrong with exerting one´s freedom to travel even in the most difficult conditions, if one accepts the risk and dangers, otherwise we would had never discovered but the near neighborhood…
There was a time when you needed to go there to tell it, and take the risks, highest mountains, dangerous underdeveloped countries , wars…
No need any more with Metaverse…They want us experiencing just fake stories and landscapes..
In the end, people strande in the I-95 seemd to have taken it all with patience, humor and even humanity…
It seems that a guy driving a truck full of bakery products, called his boss to ask for permission and procceded to give away bags of fresh bread to the drivers stuck on the road…
In the end all resulted in a very human lovely Christmas story..
We need of these stories especially these days when we find it difficult to reconcile with the human genre…
That a politician involved took advantage for some self-propaganda, well, do not tell me, they are another species…
It seems that the storm came to put everybody in their place…
Call me a Grinch, but giving away someone else’s food for free during a “free expression” traffic jam is not my idea of a charming moment of shared humanity.
I hope the moment of shared humanity inspired the recipients to pay for these proffered, assuming the wealthiest counties in thee US surround the US Capitol. Nope, I don’t celebrate giving out free stuff as a “lovely Christmas story”.
Deap
It does not seem that capitalism was endangered – as Marlene tells it the bakery boss gave his blessing before the bakery products were distributed to the multitude.
Well, Deap, it made the lovely Christmas story for me.
Take into account that we here are being forbbiden entry even into hospitals to take care of our sick relatives interned there, having to look for alternatives ways underground….
This if you do not want to face a kinda recently empowered as nazi hospital ovelooker keeps you from entering the public venue, paid with your taxes, while a whole bunch of herded humans making line to show their Covid passports join the nazi shouter shouting at you as a choir…
I dunno, but watching the video where a young men had the occurrence to help his fellow compatriots without wondering whther they would hold a nazi pass or not, was, well, a respit..Sometyhing reminiscent of the old normal..
Thought that in spite of your horrible stablishment, still all is not lose for you, and that you seem to really have a great nation…
Have you heard how Macron spoke about the unvaccinated French, how it did Trudeau of the Canadian ones?
Do you think either Macron or Trudeaum or anyone from those herded alienated masses would have offered bread to their stranded unvaccinated nationals if offered the opportunity?
I dounbt it, they want us killed, and will not stop until they achieve it.
The new German health minister is presuring for mandatory vaccinations in Germany lest the new mild circulating variant Omicron could prvide the german citizens “dirty inmunity” and could leave the vaccines to waste…For more inri, if possible, they will not keep any record of these inyected vaccines…Could you understand such a thing as a public health measure? I can not, I intepret it so that people, relatives can not demand in case of damage or death..
I dunno whether you make your mind or not, but to me it is clear they want to kill us in mass…
In this environment, to find a guy who in the middle of a snow storm and a kilometric traffic jam not only do not want to kill me, shout at me, or humiliate me, but indeed try to save me from hunger, I saw it just like a blessing…
Of course, anyone sees things from their own perspective.
We are here in full dictatorial dystopian state…
Marlene,
Aren’t all of those demanding universal mRNA vaccines the same people that fear and loath GMOs and “Big Pharma”?
Go figure.
I wonder how many of the stranded overnight intrepid beltway drivers just, you know, got out of their cars and hiked out to a hotel, mall, bar, whatever instead of sitting there freezing. Who can’t walk 8 or 9 miles?
Eric Newhill,
A lot of people don’t dress for a hike in the cold when they get in their cars around here and there are a lot of people who can’t walk 8 or 9 miles. Plus, the stretch of I-95 south of Fredericksburg and even in south Stafford is pretty desolate, not wilderness desolate, but without motels.
TTG,
Well then there should be a mandated national fitness program so people can walk 8 or 9 miles. Also, like seat belts, laws that require cold weather survival gear to be in every car in case the distance to shelter is greater than that which can be walked.
Joking, of course. I always hated that beltway traffic. IMO, only a lost soul would voluntarily experience it every day, or even once a month, unless they owned a towing company. Feh.
Eric Newhill,
I do remember the President’s Council on Physical Fitness under Kennedy and the coveted, at least in my hometown, cloth patch we received for passing the test. PT/sports were required subjects all through school back then. Even RPI required 4 credits of PE/sports for graduation unless you were in ROTC. I’m sure that’s all gone. Germany required us to have a decent first aid kit and emergency triangle in our cars. By law, we were required to render first aid to fellow motorists. I always thought it was like the state demanding us to be a man or at least a decent human being. I liked the idea.
Beltway and I-95 traffic is always a nightmare, a daily nightmare to commuters. I was lucky enough to work out of Vint hill Farms Station near Culpeper for the first couple of years I lived in the area. After being “shanghaied” into DIA, I had to endure that commute for several years until I discovered the VRE commuter train from Quantico. What an improvement in lifestyle.
Yeah, a bit of a Grinch you are.
The young driver got a hunch of humanity.
The boss just got the advertising oppotunity of his .
What is lost?
Deap,
The bread truck story was on the local news tonight. The bakery owner authorized the driver to distribute the bread and potato rolls to all who needed them. The driver and other stranded volunteers gave bread and rolls out to people along a two mile stretch of the highway. I totally disagree with you. This is a lovely Christmas story. So is the story of the young driver who heated up some breakfast burritos and coffee in his well equipped semi and gave it to someone and his mother in the car in front of him. Even Tim Kaine’s story of the Connecticut family returning home from Florida who distributed their souvenir oranges to those around them, including Tim Kaine, brought a smile to my face.
It’s like the story of Matteras Mack opening up his furniture stores to hurricane and flood victims in
Houston. As far as I’m concerned, the man is a saint as opposed to that greedy charlatan, Joel Osteen, who didn’t want those nasty people soiling the new carpet in his megachurch.
Locally, I’ve seen nothing but good cheer, courtesy and generosity among everyone I’ve encountered these last few days. I have faith in our people. The common denominator is that everyone here recognizes the dignity in their fellow man and acts accordingly.
Fred,
VTOT routinely shuts I-95 down for major accidents or medevacs. It should have been a no brainer to stop all on ramps while the jack knifed trucks and stuck cars were cleared allowing for plows to make a pass or two. It could have been a rolling shutdown. I haven’t heard anyone crying about their freedom to travel on I-95 in a snowstorm, just some whining about why VDOT didn’t save them once they “freedomed” their way in the jam up.
I didn’t build a snowman. Several now exist in the neighborhood. But I did get to break out my cross country skiis for a quiet tour through the woods. There was enough snow to blaze a trail through the underbrush. That was heavenly.
It is a nice change, though I don’t miss shoveling it. Saw some nice pics of boats in Deltaville on a childhood friend’s FB page. Gorgeous to see. Reminds me of my last hunting trip with my dad.
TTG
Glad to hear your household is surviving the inclement weather. Serious question; say someone had died on the I-95, would you consider this a reason to limit freedom of movement under such conditions in future? In general, should people be prevented from doing stupid things for their own safety and in this example, be deprived of the educational experience of a freezing night in a stuck automobile? Reagan did not think this way, but then much has changed in recent decades.
Barbara Ann,
No one had to die to convince me that a better plan should be developed. If a better plan was in place, freedom of movement would have been enhanced on I-95. People are prevented, or at least discouraged, from doing plenty of stupid things. You can’t drive drunk or tear down the road at 100 mph with faulty brakes. If you’re out on the water, you best have a life preserver for everyone aboard. If one is hell bent on spending a freezing night in a car, that can be accomplished in your driveway. I doubt VDOT or the police will stop you. If people acted with more common sense and forethought, these rules wouldn’t be needed.
But you go skiing at your age could seem to others stupid too..
You could well break your hip, or your elbow ( an excruciating experience, I can tell you..), imagine if added to that you forgot your mobile phone or got without charge..Shit happens..
Those others may find imprescindible driving to join a son or daughter and grandchildren for Christmas, or they simply were working like the guy transporting bread…
I find stupid people accepting being vaccinated thrice in a year with an experimental product widely proved uneffective and morevoer quite dangerous who left hundreds of thousands crippled, yet, I leave them alone, eventhough all of us contribute to the astronomic spending in those useless meds with our taxes…
Why vaccinated people are not able to do the same?
I am increasingly convinced that those meds really have changed something in your DNA…
Marlene,
Last Summer, I took down a 40 foot blue spruce single handedly. You must think I’m stark raving mad. I had a series of three polio vaccine injections in short order followed by another series of three live virus oral polio vaccines. You must think my parents monsters for allowing that. Those vaccines were just as experimental at the time.
Well, Polio is really a crippling illness, what they call Covid-19 is not, at least for the majority of humanity without serious comorbidities.
What you do not explain is why we should be all vaccinated by force.
Btw, I am also vaccinated of Polio, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis, Tétanos, Difteria, and even Yellow Fever…
Once I took Malaria preventive treatment but had to stop taking in the middle of the travel because it made me sick from the start, while Malaria is only a possibility…I use to wear long long sleeves and trousers at night even in hot weather when required…
Taking antipaludic treatment before and during a travel is an option, is not mandatory…probably because the treatment has a lot of side effects…and due its approved status you could sue the Pharma Company if suffering damage and it would be mandatory.
The current invasion on people´s bodies is taking place because of sheer unaccountability on the part of governments and Big Pharma.
Did you know that the Australian government wnat to pay just 20.000$ to those people who can prove they resulted crippled by the mRNA vaccines?
Do you think you could have it through with 20.000$ in your twenties or thirties if crippled and not being able anymore to work or find an adequate job?
What part of that they do not care at all about our health and future, and that just want to make people dependant and submit them into misery one way or the other you can not understand?
You lost your natural immunity for nothing and in the travel got linked and enslaved to a Big Pharma for being allowed to live!
That means you got an owner….You were previously free, it is not that they return your liberty every time you get a new boost, it is that you had your freedom by design, they appropiate it, and now sell it to you on condition you got their drug…If you do not think that smells of rat from afar, you must have lost your intelligence skills, TTG, so sorry…
P.S: You can delete my previous comment which is similar to this one.
Marlene,
Polio is a crippling illness, but not as widespread or crippling as most of us remember. It was akin to the seriousness of Covid-19 in actual effect. We, as a nation, were just scared shitless of polio in the 50s and 60s.
“Approximately 70% of all polio infections in children are asymptomatic. Infected individuals without symptoms shed the virus and are able to transmit the virus to others. Approximately 24% of polio infections in children consist of a minor, nonspecific illness without clinical or laboratory evidence of central nervous system invasion. Less than 1% of all polio infections in children result in flaccid paralysis.”
That’s the bad shit. The case fatality rate among that 1% is 2% to 5% among children and up to 15% to 30% among adolescents and adults. It increases to 25% to 75% with bulbar involvement. I believe that refers to paralysis of the respiratory system, the kids in iron lung stuff. We accepted the risks of the vaccines which were and remain serious. Today there are more polio cases caused by the live oral vaccine than by natural infection. Yet that vaccine remains in use. An mRNA polio vaccine is in development to remove the risk of the current oral vaccine.
You’ve expressed some looney ideas about the imaginary effects of mRNA vaccines, natural immunity and vaccine induced government ownership. Those ideas aren’t consistent with your apparent acceptance of those other vaccines and malarial prophylactics you mentioned. You should think that through.
We’ve got an all electric house too. Generator powers lights (thank you LEDs/CFLs), reefer, pump and one room of heat. We rotate heat in rooms so nothing gets too cold. Power’s been out here, north of Richmond, since Monday AM, REC expects we’ll be back up by Friday. Some of Verizon’s towers have run out of diesel for their generators so cell service sucks. We’re getting down to older wood in the woodpile, and scotch so things could be worse:)
lefty665
You need a bigger generator. Mine is 15 years old and powers the whole house when needed.
If we had natural gas, we would have one of those whole house generators. They are well worth the initial expense. I have a 12,000 watt portable that I keep in the garage and rolled out in the driveway for use. I can’t store or move anything bigger.
Neighbors for approx $30,000 went all solar off the grid with two Tesla Wall batteries .They are learning to adjust around these new energy storage capacity, use of heating appliances, and sunny day recharging capacities to keep everything topped off.
We did have a recent siege of a week of gloomy rain which had material impact on the battery use and recharging ratio. But mainly we do have plenty of sunny, 75 degree days.
So all was well and good until the owner ( well into a certain age) told us he intends to go up on his roof of his two story home, in order to keep the solar panels cleaned off for maximum efficiencies.
Yes, that too is part of the solar panel equation. Either risk life and limb DIY, or pay extra every year to have someone younger and more limber do this for you. The money you save going “solar” quickly gets nibbled away by new maintenance costs, back up generators, diminished full service capacity when needed, and aging equipment with no replacement parts nor skill levels in currently available repair persons.
Another shattered green dream – the devil is in the details. At least we can keep and eye on our neighbor when he ascends to his roof top, incase he teeters off. And hopefully our land phone running off the existing grid will still work to call 911.
Deap,
That thought about snow covered solar panels occurred to as I looked at the foot of snow on my roof. Supposedly, the slick glass, steep angle and dark color helps, but i still see it as a potential problem. Going up on the roof to clean off the panels is a not starter to me. The Tesla wall batteries do seem like a good idea whether you have solar panels or not.
We hated to see our copper phone lines leave, but the lines were loosing twisted pairs to wear over the years. We have FIOS with a small battery backup that has proven sufficient for several days of phone service. Still no smartphones.
I started college in January, 1985, in Buffalo, NY. The day I departed along with a 2nd car full of relatives, it snowed like hell, 20something inches and by the time we passed Utica, about a quarter of the way there, the roads were becoming impassable and dangerous.
At Chittenango, there were 2 huge plow trucks parked in the road and State Troopers flagging traffic in to the service area located there, where I spent the night under a payphone. The next day they cleared the road as far as Rochester, but Buffalo was still unreachable because they were also getting pounded with lake effect, and again, 2 plow trucks parked in the road, this time at the Rochester exit.
Maybe they never do that in Michigan, but apparently NY knows how to do this stuff.
COL Lang –
In California it will be illegal to sell gasoline-powered generators beginning in 2024.
And that is in a state with a fragile electrical grid and the ever present threat of a blackout whenever the Santa Ana winds blow (in order to manage the wildfire hazards).
Yet another reason to terminate one’s residence in the ‘Golden’ State. This native Californian left almost half a century ago and never looked back (I now live in Kansas).
https://www.thedrive.com/news/42744/california-is-banning-small-engines-heres-what-it-means
Our generator can run on natural gas or gasoline. Is that included in the California ban? I’m not sad about the demise of 2 cycle leaf blowers and trimmers, but serious chainsaws are different. The small electric chainsaws work for me, but not for the serious arborists.
Our very blue California town just banned any new natural gas hook-ups. Only electric power allowed in all new construction. Luckily, they have so far not banned existing gas hookups.
As mentioned, this latest round of virtue-signaling displaces the energy production pollution somewhere else.
But in two curve-flattening weeks, I shall make no future predictions about what our local government can and will do to us, for whatever reason they, as our duly elected political majority, chooses to do.
Deap,
We’ve never had natural gas hookups in our area and I doubt if we ever will. Beyond my neighborhood there are no water or sewer hookups either. Yet, we all make do quite nicely. It’s all part of local future growth and development plans. We don’t have to like it all or agree with it all. We can even vote in new local officials if we feel that strongly about it. Or we can move someplace more to our liking.
In 1956 I was visiting a friend in Arlington and we took a bus to the nearest movie theater (roughly where 7 Corners shopping center is today) to see Elvis in “Love me Tender”. When the movie was over we found that heavy snow had started and while we caught the next back it had to stop soon as the snow was too fast and heavy.
My family was living off Route One in Woodbridge while my father was taking the “Senior School” class at the Quantico MCB. I was stranded in Arlington for five days before Route One had opened up so I could get home.
My recollection is that there just were no serious snow plows on road maintenance crews at that time – as such storms must have been quite rare. We moved on the base for the next three years and the road crews used conventional road graders the few times snow needed to be plowed.
VDOT has never sunk serious cash into a fleet of snowplows. Things are different up north. In the 50s and 60s our town selectman in Connecticut was elected on his ability to keep the roads plowed. He usually drove a plow himself. A few years ago, we were in Saratoga County, NY during a serious snowstorm. The roads in the small development were cleaned by first light. It’s expected up there. Here in Virginia, you’re lucky to see any kind of plow in the developments days after a storm. The thought is that what God gives, he’ll take away… in due time.
The good thing is, based on my experience living there, the great Jan6 anniversary celebration will be preempted by snowstorm talk.
I was living in ‘Nap-town when we had the twin Super Bowl blizzards. I commuted via Independence and you didn’t have to steer — there were ruts with about a foot of built-up ice on either side so you just followed them; no switching lanes or anything. Parked cars were plowed-in along there for weeks. The thing about snow in DC is a few miles E-W make all the difference.
Later on I was using metro from Stadium-Armory and after a snow it was horrible with people having no idea how to use the fare machines (back then with the stored value paper cards). People would get on metro going outbound to New Carrollton because there was no room on the inbound trains.
I liked those paper fare cards for Metro. It was the same system I used for years throughout Germany. Don’t know what they do now. I also liked those cash public phones rather than the plastic cards… no records.
I think Kaine was coming up I-95 primarily for the 6 Jan observance. I hope he feels it was worth the night in his car. DC wasn’t hit near as bad by the storm as further south. Richmond only had an inch or so.
Here is something I never understood when living “back east” in Ohio and Wash DC – so many people parked their cars overnight outdoors – in open apartment parking lots. No carports or garages where available.
This always meant scraping out a tiny rectangle early in the morning on the front windshield in order to drive tunnel vision to work in whatever snow or frost had accumulated overnight.
No way could a whole windshield be cleared off in time to drive away. Had to leave that work to the internal car defroster. So out we went with the crazy other DC drivers sharing the roads, who really did have very little experience driving in the snow.
At least as former California High Sierra skiers, we had picked up some snow driving skills.
@TTG,
Covid is by no means so crippling as Polio by any streight of imagination, the mRNA vaccines are. See testimonies by an orthopedic surgeon in his fourties affected by Transverse Mielitis after being vaccinated, collected by an honest US senator.
Thus, you agree on that Covid vaccines, to allegedly prevent an illness which for most of the population in the world of all ages curses with mild symtomps, must be mandatory and in case the person resist forced into it?
It is interesting that you use to denounce dictatorial ,measures in the USSR, I do not think this happened there, yes in Nazi Germany.
From a year ago. In Science ( sceintific review.
In more than 1000 patients they did not find any reinfection after covid. (Now there are other studies for a year and a half).
Immunity from infection is UNEQUALED to that of vaccines.
And this is published by a vaccinating troop that LIVES from vaccines.
Btw, Israel is at the front of the vaccination pace, all mayor Big Pharma companies along the hedge funds who hold most shares in them are Jews.
Welcome to Pax Judaica.
About trees, storms and houses . . .
I live in a co-op townhouse dwelling unit. The brushy woods right next to me has some crappy partially-rotting elm trees big enough that they could reach my house if they fell directly towards it. Luckily, some of them have either fallen over or dropped limbs not on my unit ( though one dropped a big limb on some of my precious treasures carefully stored outside near the edge of the brushy woods).
If I had a real house with big trees near enough to it that they could fall on it if they fell exactly in its direction, I would have cut off all limbs that could weigh the tree in the house’s direction, or could themselves fall on the house if they broke off. I would expect the future to offer more of the “unusual weather events” that we have been seeing lately, and I would want to de-risk any trees within potential reach of my house, if I had one.
Different Clue I got my handiman in the next day to save my comcast line.
That is good. If the comcast line is also the computer access line, then that is very good.
I know that “de-risking” big trees the way I suggested could make them look very ugly. But if there are any trees which could pose a very big risk to a very nice house, would it be worth living with the ugliness of de-risking them, just in case?