Snow-mageddon

For the past week or so all of our local weather forecasters have been warning us about a doozy of an upcoming storm. By Friday, Paul Douglas was forecasting 12-16" for the metro area by Saturday evening, the most since the great Halloween blizzard of 1991.

So what does a "normal" person do when even the most cautious of meteorologists is predicting a snow-pocalypse? I don't know, maybe plan to curl up with a Kindle and a pot of tea and not leave the house for two days?

What does Mike do? He sets up the tent.

Yes, that's right. My crazy husband slept outside last night after we got home from Black Swan (great movie, BTW! Although I do agree with Jezebel about the eating disorder issues to the movie). I slept terribly since I was so worried about him. Luckily he came back inside at around 6:30am, noting that while his winter sleeping bag worked great, our three-season tent was maybe not ideal for snow camping.

By the time we got around to shoveling the driveway this afternoon, we had over 12" of snow. And the gusting wind made it bitterly cold. It was pretty miserable. Good thing I was dressed well for it - here I am, before braving the elements:

 After an hour of back-breaking labor, we checked the news and found out that (a) the airport was closed, (b) Metro Transit shut down bus service, (c) all the local cultural events were cancelled (including the Holidazzle parade, all events at the U of M campus, and the MN Orchestra concert), and (d) Hennepin County pulled all but 5 plows off the roads, due to treacherous conditions (too treacherous for a plow?!? that must be really bad! but I think it really begs the question: who were the five chumps who got stuck out there when everyone else was called off?).

It was at that point that Mike started to wonder about all the snow piling up on our poor little three-season tent. Sigh. So we bundled back up again so we could go extricate the tent from the drifts in the backyard. As long as I was out there again, though, I took a couple pictures of the drifts around our house:

And it's still snowing. Yikes!

Hope you're all staying warm out there! And on that note, here are the cats, staying warm during the storm as well:

Here's hoping that the spring thaw comes soon!