To start, FireDad walked to work today. There’s absolutely no way our vehicles were getting out of our private road (read: no plowing). Four wheel drive does nothing on a solid sheet of ice. Or, it may do something but it may be something that doesn’t get stopped when you get started thus causing you to careen off of our hill and onto the roof of the old school below our road. Not great. So he walked. Word is that he didn’t fall on his way. Either he’s telling the truth or is bruised and embarrassed. I’ll let you know tomorrow.

At 8:25 this morning, our apple tree looked like this:

That was while the ice was still falling. Well, I might be skewing the facts a bit. I don’t think ice was actively falling when I woke up (before 7:00, thank you very much, BigBrother) but it was falling when this photo was taken. Because as I leaned out of our front window (I’m a classy photographer), my hand and camera got wet. So, yes, active ice falling in this shot.

Then sometime after 11:00, I noticed the snow falling. And hard. At 11:48, I took this picture:

Same apple tree branch, now accumulating snow. In fact, after I snapped that photograph and while I was busy uploading, we went through a brief period of absolute White Out (and not the Penn State kind, either). I couldn’t see our back fence or my neighbor’s house. Right now (1:04pm), the wind is howling, the snow is blowing and it just keeps falling from the sky, piling on top of the ice which is on top of the snow that fell the other day which was on top of the leftover melted snow from the eight inches we had a week and a half ago.

NBC4i in Columbus, Ohio sometimes ignores us over here, about an hour (plus) east of the city, but watching the newscast let me know that we’ve still got a couple hours of snow left. I do know, thanks to their wonderfully organized website, that we are under a Level 2 Snow Emergency. What’s that mean?

Roadways are hazardous with blowing and drifting snow. Only those who feel it is necessary to drive should be out on the roads. Contact your employer to see if you should report to work.

Columbus is actually under a Level 3 which means that unless you are safety personnel, you aren’t allowed on the road. You could be arrested if you’re on the road without actual cause like, oh, I bet labor would qualify. And with a storm like this, I’m sure quite a few mothers are going into labor today. I wish them well.

At 2:10, I opened the window again, causing BigBrother to have a meltdown that he couldn’t hang out the window with me. Parenting fail.

According to the news Special Report on right now, the snow is “essentially over.” Now we get to deal with drifting and blowing due to the crazy winds that pushed the snow in, through and back out. The temperature has dropped six degrees since I noticed that the snow was stopping/stopped. However, I decided it was warm enough to shovel the snow off of the porch and front steps… without gloves. I will tell you that was a poor decision on my part. Just a heads up in case you’re like my friend Amy who commented on this post and said she broke the ice off of her front porch with a hammer. My tip: wear gloves. Seriously.

[I will continue to update this post until the craziness stops. Do you have a post about the Ice & Snow Storm hitting the midwest and other locations? Hit me up with a link. I'd like to pull them together tonight or tomorrow.]