St John's Blizzard

We just got power back.  This is some blizzard, apparently power's going out all over the island.  Not just the city or something, the ENTIRE ISLAND.  Which I guess means I should have named this post Newfoundland Blizzard, but hey, too late now.  I'm seeing photos on Facebook of people who are snowed in -- literally snowed in, there's a four-foot snowdrift against their front door.  Our doors are pretty protected from the wind, so we don't have to worry about that too much.  I've been making an attempt to keep our front door open-able though, by going down every hour or two and pushing it as far open as I can.

Check out my front yard.  I'm not leaving my doorstep to get decent blizzard photos, because fuck getting out of my pajamas today, but you can see enough to make a point.  See that picnic table?

It's a big table, and it's buried up to the seats in snow.  But usually when it snows the top of the table is covered too, and I use the snow on top to measure how much snow fell that day.  Today?  Fuck that, the wind clears off any snow as soon as it lands on it.  And that other flat thing to the left?  That's another table, it's been buried completely.  Forget seeing the street, I can barely see to the end of the driveway.  My house is shaking and creaking in the wind, and my bedroom window is buzzing like an angry beehive.

Everything is shut down today.  My mother tried to call the radio to announce that her work is closed, and they told her that they weren't taking closure announcements any more because everything was closing.  Mom had to use my cell to call them too, because our landlines are down.  I've been listening to CBC's extended coverage of the storm on the big Dewalt worksite radio in the living room and a little hand-crank radio in the kitchen and there's some pretty cool stories people are telling there.  This storm is kind of badass.