Snow in Frederick MD (PERSONAL)

The National Weather Service said that here in Frederick MD we got the heaviest snowfall of anywhere in the Washington DC/Baltimore metro area in the Big Snow of Feb 5/6 - 33.8 inches, 86cm. Alexandria VA was reported at a respectable 28.9in 73cm. DC itself got a feeble 17.8in 45cm. All that hot air?

The Saturday before we'd got a surprise 6in 15cm after they'd forecast a 30% chance of 2in (5cm). Now the forecast is for another dump today and tomorrow (Feb 9/10) of "ten to twenty inches" 25cm to 50cm.

That'll be 50 to 60 inches (125cm to 152cm) in 17 or 18 days. Of course there are places not far away that got more - the mountains of West Virginia and central Pennsylvania. We're a typical crossroads town - at the crossroads of the east-west 'national pike' Baltimore to Ohio now I-70 and the north-south Gettysburg Pike, Georgetown to central Pennsylvania now I-270/US15.

They say here that this season is the snowiest in living memory. Where's this global warming Al Gore and his frenetic crew have been promising? Bunch of hucksters!

Unlike the fraudulent longterm prognosticators of global warming armageddon the day-by-day weather forecasters have done a decent job. They gave us good warning of the Feb 5/6 snow. They underestimated the totals in saying the day before that it would be one to two feet (30cm to 60cm) here. We got nearly twice the mean of the forecast.

The snow came down pretty continuously from about 3pm Friday to 1pm Saturday. Temps were only just below freezing -2C, -3C etc, winds were light.

The word 'storm' was used, wrongly. A storm has some violence to it - very high winds, torrential downpours or thick snow accumulating very fast - like 5 or 6 inches an hour.

We had no storm.

We had light to moderate snow - one to two inches an hour - that went on and on for about 22 hours straight.  The snow persisted longer than the initial forecast which had about 15 hours of snow and it clearing up at sunrise Saturday, whereas it continued  past noon.

In some ways it wouldn't have been as bad if there had been more wind, more 'storm.' It was still enough for great heights of snow - and weight - to accumulate on tree limbs and awnings and overhead cable assemblies.

We were more fortunate than many people who had cable TV and telephone lines dragged down and service cut off. Some lost electric power and it will took them a day or two to get it restored. We had five or six 2 to 3 second electric outages from ice allowing momentary arcing over of a transformer located on the edge of a parking lot opposite. As power arced over there was a loud explosion of the ice, shattering it, but ending the arc-over and allowing power to flow again.

Computers without backup power all went down of course and had to be rebooted.

There was some snow damage to my shrubs and trees but they'll grow back. My big old Magnolia is weighted down by snow but seems intact. We got off lightly.

Walking the streets nearby there were several parked cars crushed by falling limbs, poles down, some fences down, and store/shop awnings ripped off. The streets were littered with limbs of trees that had been weighted down by snow and torn off the trunk.

City workers and contractors got most streets plowed to a single lane with an inch or so of packed snow on the pavement by the middle of the day after the storm. We have mostly one-way streets here where I work and live in downtown Frederick, so a single lane works, kind of. The problem is where to put 3 feet of snow with houses right on the sidewalks, sidewalks 4ft to 10ft wide (1.2m to 3m) and streets of 36ft (11m) with curb parking both sides.

Over half the residents park in the streets normally. In big snows like this the city opens up five multistory parking garages - perversely named 'decks' - normally used by visitors who provide most of the custom for the town's well regarded restaurants, bars, boutiques, and countless antique stores. Those customers aren't showing up from Chevy Chase, Bethesda, Fels Point or Arlington so the residents are encouraged to clear the city streets and 'deck' their cars.

Probably nine out of ten cars normally street-parked are 'decked.' The one in ten on the streets are great blobs of snow now walled in by plow banks 3ft or 4ft (1m) high.

With temperatures staying low they have to bring in loaders and dump trucks and truck the snow out of town to even start to get streets back to normal with curbside parking and two traffic lanes. For two days after the streets were a symphony of backing beeps emitted by an odd variety of big articulated wheel loaders, skid-steer loaders and bucket equipped tractors moving snow  into a variety of trucks for carting away. The job is barely a quarter done.

Every resident and business has a huge snow shoveling job. We (gals upstairs in the same building and me) got a path cleared along the front sidewalk and from the front door to the street. We've got trench tracks from the backdoor to the outside basement doors and the north sidegate. There are  back stairs the gals use for their  dogs, and their track to the south sidegate, then to the garage and the driveway. We're a corner building so have sidewalk in two streets to shovel. The longer Court St sidewalk has cable TV and telephone wires down on it and snow drifted to well over 3ft 90cm deep, so that got left to last.

The city's dogs had a glorious time in the snow. With almost no traffic and the few vehicles creeping along it was safe to let them run free, and explore and chase. Four feet and claws are greatly superior to two when it's slippery under foot.

Major worry about a new fall of snow is the weight accumulating on the city's many 'flat roofs' - typically about 1/12 pitch - and the fear of roof cave-ins. Some guys have been up on those roofs shoveling snow over the edge to the sidewalk or yard below. But on an icy standing seam metal roof that can be hazardous in itself. I decided to take my chances on the roof taking the extra weight.

A curse of energy efficiency and heavy roof insulation is that it cuts down on the melting of roof snow from the house heat and increases the roof loads the old timbers have to support.

A positive aspect of the big snow is that there's a lot of camaraderie - people who would normally busily walk past amble, stop and chat, and pat the dog. You get to know neighbors, who were just passing faces before - editor. 2010-02-09