I’ve lived through my share of snowstorms, having grown up in the Snow Belt of upstate NY. My benchmark storm was the blizzard of 1966. Between 9 feet of snowfall (yes, you read that right) and high winds, we had six snow days in a row off school. We lived at the foot of a hill, and the snowplows couldn’t break through the wall of snow at the top of the hill for days. This offered a great opportunity for my sister and me to use the road for sledding without any pesky cars in the way. We carried our aluminum saucer sleds up the hill, and down we’d fly. After several days of this, even we got stir-crazy away from school. Finally the snowplow was able to bust through the snow wall, and we were back to our normal routines.
Some of the more memorable snowstorms of my adult life occurred in places where snow isn’t common. A month before we moved from North Carolina to Seattle, we had a snowstorm where we lost power for two days. One night we heated Lean Cuisines in the gas grill for dinner. Seattle doesn’t get much in the way of snow, but all hell breaks loose when it does.
So what can one do when snowed in? Cook and/or bake. The gas grill and a Coleman stove saved our bacon when our power went out. I made bagels during another snowstorm when school was closed. A pot of soup or chili is a natural thing to make in nasty weather. You can couple it with cleaning out the produce bin of excess carrots, onion, and celery. Make plenty so you can have leftovers for lunch once the plows come through and you can go back to work.
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We had a snowstorm in Seattle in 2008. The city came to a slippery halt. Several days later we managed to dig out and have dinner with friends who live in West Seattle. For some reason, the roads in that neighborhood were well plowed. Could it have been due to the then-Mayor living down the street? As it happened, he gave himself a B for the response to the storm. Eight months later the citizenry gave him an F and voted him out of office.
I grew up in Baldwinsville, NY and also remember the legendary “Blizzard of ’66” (of course I was very young). School was closed for a week I I remember the snow as being above my father’s head. Ironically, our block of our street was plowed (although you really couldn’t go anywhere), because the chief of the volunteer fire department lived 2 doors away. It is important to have influential neighbors.