Just when we thought our relatively mild winter was at an end, Nature surprises us. Last week it was so cold that the local schools canceled classes, and we got about six inches of snow the next day. It took three days for our street to be plowed. Yesterday it warmed up enough to melt a tiny bit of the snow…Just in time for more snow. A lot more snow. At least this time the city was expecting it, and when we drove home last night there was a huge backhoe tractor sitting on our street. Our town doesn’t have enough snow plows, so they use tractors. We have been under a “blizzard warning” all day, and it’s been snowing since yesterday night. The University of Illinois declared a snow day–for the first time since 1979! Tomorrow’s classes were canceled as well; I don’t know how long it’s been since classes were canceled two days in a row. With nothing else to do, students were all over campus, playing football, tag, and “red rover” in the snow, making snow men and sliding around on sleds and cafeteria trays.

Getting to work was an adventure, but manageable. I saw at least three people stuck on the road, one of them stuck trying to get into the parking lot of a Burger King (so I guess they didn’t get breakfast or to work). Getting home from work was a little more difficult. We were giving a friend a ride as well, and as we were driving on an incline to leave our campus parking lot, the car got stuck in the snow. Our friend and some random stranger tried to push us through the snow but it didn’t work, so Grant got out and shoveled the two feet of snow in front of the car out of the way (luckily I put the snow shovel in the trunk this morning “just in case”), and then our friend managed to push the car out. We were able to get onto our street, and Grant parked the car several houses away until he was finished shoveling the driveway. Our neighbor and his son were riding around on their ATV. When he was finished with the driveway, our neighbor’s son gave him a ride back to our car on the ATV, and he finally managed to get it into the garage.

The surprise was the back of the house. The winds today were blowing generally eastward, pushing snow against the rear of our house, building a pile. Much of the screen on our screen patio was dislodged from the frame by the dog, and the semi-enclosed area created this weird vortex that left an L-shaped pile of snow in the patio. We’ll have to get more pictures tomorrow…This town is a mess!