And also in this not-so-distant land. 
Although we did get some badly needed rain last week.
We finally got snow this weekend! Unfortunately, it started up around 7pm, and I was 30 miles from home. We had about two inches before I could collect my kids and get us safely home.
Before midwesterners get all, âThatâs NUTHINâ!â, ;), I have to mention that people here do not know how to drive in snow â good snow or bad snow. This happened to be the non-slushy kind, which packs nicely and is relatively easy to drive in, especially uphill. I was thankful for that, at least.
I had a bunch of steep hills (lined with trees and deep ditches and ravines, as are all the flat streets and highways here) to drive up and down (some with stop signs at the bottom) just to get home. It was later at night, thankfully, so there wasnât as much traffic on the roads. That didnât stop people from tailgating, stopping on the hills in the middle of the road (or on the WRONG side of the road), letting themselves go too quickly down the hill before applying the brakes, etc. My nerves were a wreck by the time I got home, and Iâm relatively confident driving in the snow.
It lasted a day before it started raining again. Iâm glad. People are bad enough when it rains here, and it rains ALL THE TIME.
I like sliding sideways totally out of control in a rented Toyota YAris.
Thatâs my story and Iâm sticking to it.
(Besides, it actually was fun.)
The reactions of the Floridians to the snow we saw at my conference in Cleveland were hilarious.
For example, 1.5" of snow fell overnight. Reaction: âWell, guess Iâm not walking over to Bob Evans for breakfastâ (100 yards or so).
âEwwâŚfrozen water? You guys actually walk in that stuff?!â 
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Yeah⌠I was in Cleveland and now Iâm near DC. I used to be amazed at how the place shutdown for 1/2" of snow. Now Iâm glad when all my co-workers stay home. It means I have a quiet day ahead of me and thatâs less people out on the roads who donât know how to drive. I need at least 6" of snow before I really contemplate it being a bad day to go anywhere.
We got 51 cm of snow on Tuesday, which was a record in Ottawa for a 24-hour period. Thatâs 20 inches.
The city shut down, pretty much. All government agencies were sent an email that we could go home at 1pm. Then the madness began.
The roads were a mess, and thousands of govât people were all trying to get home at the same time. There werenât enough busses on the road, and it looked like a scene from the Walking Dead with people mobbing them if they stopped. If they didnât have to let someone off, they werenât stopping because they had no room. I saw fist fights and shoving. After 3 busses went by with no room, I figured I wasnât getting home any time soon, so I went the other way. The ones headed downtown had plenty of space.
I was soaked and freezing by then, so I just wanted to find a nice warm place for something to eat and a few beers. Hmmmm. Where is it likely to be the warmest? Some place where the girls donât wear any clothes. They have food, and beer as well. Solution.
So, several pitchers of beer later ⌠I head back to the bus stop. This is 6 hours later. The volume of people is not as bad as it was, but still a bit much for that time of night. I got on the one I wanted, that would take me straight home without any changes. Halfway back to where I had started out, they stopped letting people on the bus again.
The Ăber surge was about 3x, if you could find one. Taxi? Forget it.
The Dragonlady spent an hour digging her car out before she could leave work and has been unable to talk louder than a whisper since. She blames the city for not plowing out the library parking lot. Seriously. BLAMES THE CITY. I canât get her to understand that her chain of logic is an unreasonable one. She has a cold. She likely got it from spending an hour in the cold. This was because the parking lot wasnât plowed. On the day that the city was deluged under the biggest storm that it has ever seen.
Anyway, Iâm fine. Thanks for asking.
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I really love storms, I understand that some people die and there are horrible accidents and itâs not a fun thing for emergency services.
But I go into a state where I just accept that everything is screwed up and nothing really bothers me. I go play in the snow if I can, I crank the tunes in the car and chill out in traffic, I go walk around outside and listen to the silence most of the time.
Glad to hear. Though I reacted the same way about hearing there was a snowstorm in Canada the same way I would about seeing surfers in Hawaii. I thought they just hung out there all the time anyway. 
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