Long Island snowstorm 2013

Before:



After:

 

Thanks Tom -

This isn't bad at all. Yes, lots of snow and a pain to get rid of but our house is secure, everyone is safe and we even still have power. There were few power outages from what I understand and other than issues with the roads, we're in good shape.

 

No question that this was more of a coastal storm. This IS historic for us. I don't think I've ever seen so much snow fall in 24 hours around here. We just got word that because the roads are still a mess and there are many abandoned cars on the road, our entire town is shut down. ALL roads are closed!! Of course we find this out after my husband goes out to drop off my two daughters at the grocery store to work. LOL

 

We are actually just working on that. A number of things are pushing us to cancel (which stinks because it was going to be a GREAT service tomorrow):

* The Long Island Expressway, which is the main east/west road on Long Island is closed to all but emergency vehicles. It's not even plowed yet. The hotel is immediately off the LIE.

* Most roads haven't been plowed - even the main ones. The main ones because of cars being abandoned.

* On the road that crosses the LIE at our hotel was the site of many cars being abandoned and the drivers/passengers being taken to the town hall and are still there because they can't free the cars.

* Brookhaven Township, where our church meets is in a state of emergency and all roads are "closed". The same is true with our town of Huntington where we live.

* The area where we have church had a lot of wet precip first then the 2' of snow so under all the snow is ice.

* One of our deacons is a physical therapist administrator and spent the night at the hospital. It took him an hour to get home...from the end of his block. His street wasn't plowed and it took him that long to get the car to his house, less than an 1/6 mile from the end of the block.

* Today is around freezing temperature but with nice full sun so lots of stuff is melting a little bit but tonight is supposed to get to 18 degrees. That means ice.

So, we're talking to a few of our key people but it looks like we will close as will our Port Jefferson campus. Our home campus will consolidate the two services (9 and 11) to one service at 10.

 

We did actually end up losing power for about an hour and a half today. I had just settled in bed to watch a little TV (I'm still fighting this illness) and the power went out so I read for a couple of minutes then fell asleep. Shortly after I woke up, the power came back on.

Our pipes would only freeze if we lost power for an extended period of time. I have found in the past that our laundry room pipes do freeze when it's in the single digits but that doesn't happen often and it hasn't done any damage, thankfully.

In most snow, the most inconvenient thing is just shoveling out. The snow plows push large amounts of snow to the bottom of the driveway so this morning we had a pile at the end of the driveway of very heavy hard snow that was 7 feet from street to the driveway, 5 feet tall and about 7 feet from side to side across the driveway so that takes quite some time to clear even with a snow blower.

Then usually the streets are slippery for a day but the local road crews are great on getting the roads cleared.

The issue with this storm is that so much snow came down that it overwhelmed the snow plows and cars ended up getting stuck on the streets and are only now being taken off the streets by fork lifts. All of our roads in my town are closed to all travel and you risk getting ticketed if they find you out. Additionally, our main highway is closed to all but emergency vehicles and they still have a ton of cars stuck out there! So that makes life very difficult.

But normally, a snowfall like this is an inconvenience only for a few hours after it's done and then it's pretty much life back to normal.

Here's a picture of our main highway (Long Island Expressway) today:

 

I know. There were a number of deaths from heart attacks, a couple of people hit by snow plows, that little boy and an elderly person died of exposure. Very sad.

I was watching the earthquake and the aftershocks on the earthquake map. It was amazing how large even the aftershocks were!!!!

Well, we finally got hubby's car freed and I THINK we got the entire driveway done. I'm exhausted and have blisters on my fingers!

 

I was talking to some people at church today (we closed our campus because the roads are impassable out there so we went to our local home church) and we were saying how weird it is that these storms are so destructive for so long. Normally, it is completely back to normal 24 hours after a storm is finished and often even before that. But this storm is so different!! There are neighborhoods that haven't been plowed yet because so much snow fell that the normal pick up truck plows that we use are just too lightweight to move this much heavy snow!! So they need to use bucket trucks to lift and dump the snow!! It's just so crazy!