Darn, close call.
Don't get too close until it feels a bit more stable out there.
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We shoveled the snow away from the house, so it doesn't leak into the house (our siding sucks, and there's no barrier between the deck and the house). The deck seemed stable enough while doing that. All the other fallen trees / branches caused no damage, though one of our neighbors has her driveway blocked by fallen branches.
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Meanwhile... over here in Atlantic Canada, I've never seen a winter with so little snow. I can still see the dead grass with a few patches of ice here and there - feels really weird. Typically by now everything would be buried in a few feet of compact snow and ice.
But there's usually one big snowstorm in March, so I'm waiting for it.
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Oh, there's not been much snow here, not in South Jersey anyway. We've only had about 3 snow falls, but they've all been really bad. We had 75 degree weather in mid-February, then a foot of snow just now in March. Strange, strange weather.
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So far so good. Finally getting that decent amount of snow that was promised last time.
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"not too bad, so long as you weren't on the roads". As long as you have a good set of snow tires, the roads are the best place to be in a blizzard. The snow plows can't keep up, so all the back roads are covered and everyone stays home. You have the roads to yourself and driving around, it feels like a movie where you woke up and there is nobody else on the earth, especially in the middle of the night. You can just drive down the middle of the road if you want or go into an empty parking lot (as long as you know it has no parking dividers) and have some fun sliding around. On top of that, if you have AWD, it makes you feel unstoppable and you can have a ton of fun. Just throw a shovel in the car in case you get stuck somewhere :)
Edit: The real scary times in the north east are when you get a half inch of solid ice on every surface and live on the top of a hill in the mountains. Sliding down hills having to let off the brakes a little so the rear end of the car doesn't end up in the front can be pretty scary, especially with a drop off at the bottom of the hill. Then getting home you have to get back up the hills which means getting the 4wd truck and a chain to tow you up the hill. I don't live there anymore and miss those days :(
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I wish that was the case here. Instead there's quite a few people on the roads still and trucks will drive above the normal speed limit because they're able to, while the majority of vehicles (even with snow tires which everyone has) slide around and struggle to stop. It's so dangerous with so many accidents every time and people don't learn. :/ They drive so fast and wait to stop until last minute, or you have the people who are terrified to be on the roads and will drive 10mph on the highway making it super dangerous for everyone else. Ahhh driving is the worst here during blizzards. My brothers often work night shifts and my one brother just got in accident going off the road, because someone very nearly plowed into him, he swerved into a ditch. And that was at like 4am. :/
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I guess it depends on where you live. I never lived in a big city. I would imagine there would still be a lot of people travelling in cities and causing lots of accidents. I grew up in a smaller town and then moved into a rural area in the mountains. Neither of these places had a lot of traffic when it was snowing really bad and it seemed that most people knew how to drive because there was a lot of snow for most of the winter so most of them probably grew up and learned to drive in it.
I did have a lady drive her van off the side of our driveway once because she thought it was the road. We had a tree laying down the side of the driveway and she managed to drive over it and bottom out. She came to our door in tears because she was afraid. It was pitch black at like 9PM and we lived in the woods and had signs up about no trespassing. Made her some hot chocolate and she sat in the house watching a movie while we spent almost 2 hours digging and towing her van out trying to get it back over the tree without damaging it.
Now I live in the south where it is warmer and people have no idea what snow is like and there are people causing all kind of accidents just from driving in the rain.
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Yeah I don't live in a big city, but I live on a busy street now next to the highway. I can understand what you mean for small towns/side streets as they aren't as constantly plowed. I think the downfall here where I live in NY is that because there's so much snow every winter people become more blasé and reckless.
Aw that's great that you guys helped her out when she needed it! I'm sure she really appreciated it. Always cool to hear little happy stories like that out of bad situations. Even though everyone tends to be miserable and hate the snow, on average they are usually good at helping one another out. Helping others shovel or snowblow or warning about unsalted areas. I recently had a guy help me walk across this sidewalk without me asking because there was so much ice and my shoes have no traction (I'm not physically able to wear boots).
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Sounds like where I used to live. People don't know how to drive around there and we'd get idiots doing 5 over the limit in almost whiteout conditions because they're in a 4wd vehicle and think that means road and weather conditions don't apply to them.
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Well, when driving in snowy conditions, you have to contend with the snow, and the other drivers. And here in South Jersey, where it doesn't snow that much, I'm much more afraid of the other drivers.
Then again, the last time I drove in snow was in NE PA. I got snowed in while skiing, and trying to drive home I was the jerk on the road that was creating a hazard for everyone else. My car, for whatever reason, couldn't handle the snow at all. The moment I tried to climb any hill, the front tires would break loose and the car would start sliding sideways.
I don't know if it was my tires (which aren't snow tires, and are pretty low on tread), my car (VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI), or the manual transmission (which is really torque-y), but it was awful. After three failed attempts to climb the hill leading out from the ski resort, I gave up and went the other direction trying to find a place for the night. I went off the side of the road once, and helpful people helped get me back on the road. I got stuck trying to climb another hill, and helpful people helped push my car up the hill. I finally reached an inn, but it was at the end of a really long hill. After three attempts to climb that hill, I went off the side of the road at the bottom, and ended up walking the 1/4 mile up the hill to the inn. So, given my car, I'm happy to stay off the roads whenever it snows.
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Snow tires will make a big difference, even over a set of all seasons with good tread depth. I use to have a manual 98 Jetta GLX with the VR6 and it did alright in the snow, but it liked to plow straight through turns. I had some older, lighter cars, like a manual 91 civic hatch with the little 70hp engine. That car was a lot of fun and did really well with snow tires, better than the Jetta. We had an Audi A4 with all seasons and I think the civic did better because it had snow tires even though the Audi was AWD. The AWD will help going up hills, but when you get into a turn or on the brakes going down a hill, it comes down to the traction of the tires because the AWD won't help. Unless you don't mind driving the AWD like a rally car and spinning the crap out of the tires while going a bit sideways :)
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Yeah, it seldom snows in South Jersey, and I rarely drive in the snow, so I don't have snow tires. And my last car, a manual Scion tC, did just fine without them. But if I'm going to be going up into NE PA to go skiing more often, I may have to invest in a set. I don't know what it is about the SportWagon TDI, but it was the worst experience trying to drive in snow I've ever had. People helping me were shocked that I was having so much trouble with a FWD car, but when they tried to drive the car up a hill they had the same trouble I did. Something about the combination of tires and transmission and powertrain just make it terrible in snow.
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Glad you're safe, hope you guys continue to be and that there's not too much damage.
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We are safe, thanks. It looked like the tree just smashed the grill, and the grill broke its fall. I was out shoveling the snow afterwards, so didn't really take a close look. Figure worst case is it damaged some of the deck railing and some of the furniture we had out there. Nothing major.
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Damn, dude, how much snow did you folks get in how much time? O.o
Glad to hear you're okay, though.
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It started snowing at 11:30, started sticking at 1, and we had about a foot by 5 when it stopped.
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Oh wow, we have the opposite problem here. The weather people measure everything in "porn star inches."
They say 10-12, but it ends up being more like 5-6.
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UPS will make sure you all still get your Amazon orders :)
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That's crazy!
Though all of my recent Amazon orders have been dropped off by folks in unmarked white vans, who like to leave the box out under the rain instead of putting it next to the front door where it's sheltered by the awning.
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Glad it didn't hit the house or crash through the window! Good luck and hope nothing else comes down!
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Yeah, it's literally inches away from the side of the house. We were very fortunate.
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damn. we lost power and internet since Friday. just got it back tonight actually. we had god knows how many trees down on our road. hope everyone else on the east coast is staying safe/ warm
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Wow, that's a long time to be without power. Glad to hear you finally got it back. My whole house is electric, so I don't know what I'd do without power for that long.
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I don't live there anymore, but I use to live in the mountains in NY near the Catskills. We use to get at least one storm every year that would dump 3 to 4 feet of snow over 1 or 2 days. The power went out once for almost 2 weeks. The power going out sucks, but I loved the snow.
Here's a pic from my brother about an hour north of NYC. He got around 2 feet.
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Wow, that is crazy! I grew up in the Albany area, and it was never that bad. I guess the Catskills helped shelter us.
My whole house runs on electricity, so if the power goes out then there's no heat, no hot water, no working stove. The only thing that still works is cold water. What do you do without power for two weeks?
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We had a propane stove, so we could lite the burners with a match. For heat, we would use either a kerosene or propane heater. Candles, flashlight, and propane or kerosene lanterns for light. When there was a really bad storm coming, we would usually fill up the bath tubs with water because we had a well which obviously wouldn't work with no power. After a couple days, we took all our food from the fridge and freezer and buried it in the snow behind the house to keep it cold. Car battery and 120v converter to run a small TV and DVD player :)
This would work for just about every storm, but when it went out for over a week, we had a friend bring over a generator he wasn't using. It wasn't a big generator, but it worked. We had oil heat, so the generator was enough to run the furnace and when the furnace wasn't running, we could run the well to get water.
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Only a little devastation. Nothing a little global warming in three months won't fix.
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Sorry to hear about your grill. I got off pretty lightly. No power outages or anything and I stayed home from work so it was just a bunch of ice to clear off my car the next morning. My ice scrapper did break, so that was too bad.
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Haha, sorry to hear about your ice scrapper. :)
And all things considered, I feel pretty fortunate. Losing a grill and part of the deck railing seems like so minor compared to the alternative. Another foot taller and that tree would ripped a hole in the house. So I feel like we got off lucky.
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Nothing like shoveling half a foot of wet, heavy, heart attack snow.
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Oh god, tell me about it. I did the sidewalks yesterday, and now I need to go out and clear the driveway and the new snow the plow pushed in. I have a little 12" electric snowthrower, and it was like, "You want me to clear this? Ha, you must be joking! Have fun with the shovel!" My back is going to be killing me tomorrow.
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Here in Brooklyn, we had almost nothing at all. Couple of inches, and it turned to slush right away.
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tree falling on the house is never a good idea, so glad it thought while falling and missed it :)
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I wasn't too concerned about today's storm. We lost power, but only for a couple hours. And then a nearby tree branch broke. Then the top of a tree in the front yard broke off. Still, not too bad, so long as you weren't on the roads.
And then the neighbors' tree fell down, right at my house. It crushed the grill, but missed the house by inches. And now I'm worried that more trees may be coming down, and falling my way. I hope all you folks are alright and staying safe.
Here's what my deck looks like now:
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