The Great Snow of OH-TEN

For those of you who live up north, humor me with this post. I live in Texas. We aren't used to seeing snow. Especially more than an inch or two. In case you haven't heard, some of the Dallas area received over 12 inches of snow last Thursday. It was the most snowfall recorded in a 24 hour period in the Metroplex.

Last Thursday I woke up to find it snowing (and not your typical "Texas snow" where it was maybe one snowflake every few minutes). It had only been snowing for about an hour or so, and the ground and streets were already well covered, so it was snowing pretty hard.

    

    

Outside my apartment Thursday morning, around 7am.

I love our local weathermen, I really do (epecially WFAA's Greg Fields, he's the greatest weatherman ever- but that's a story for another day), so it makes me laugh that Wednesday and even Thursday morning, they were saying, "Well, we might get 1-3 inches on grassy areas, but the snow should stop by late morning. Don't expect it to stick around."

I got to work a little before 9 (in the big pink building as I call it), and it seemed the snow was falling even faster. I saw some of the biggest snowflakes I had ever seen. By late morning we noticed the snow was not stopping, and really showed no signs of stopping. A friend and I attempted to go out at lunch and on our way back, noticed that ice was starting to hit the windshield.

   View from my office window

A little before 2pm my director walked around and told us we could leave. The roads were going to start getting bad and she would rather us all be safe at home (and I agreed). We were told to call the bad weather hotline the next morning to see if we had a delayed start or if we were closed.

  

  

  

 Snow on the drive home from work (I took these while I was stopped, I didn't drive and take pictures at the same time!) : )

Of course when I got home I turned into a giddy kid who had to go out and play in the snow (again, not used to seeing snow, especially this much). Not counting Spring Break of 1996 when I went skiing in New Mexico, the last time I had seen that much snow was in January of 1985 (and I was 6!)

  

Tree outside my apartment

Steps up to my apartmnt

  

My sad attempt at a snowman (again, I don't have practice, and after about 5 minutes I was ready to go inside. I prefer to call him a snow-midget!

About 3pm I had almost 6 inches of snow in my front yard

  

Looking cute in the snow

Outside my bedroom window

Watching the 6pm news, the weathermen kept repeating they were shocked we were getting so much snow and that they expected the roads to be icy in the morning (all the water and "slush" were going to freeze over night). We were about an inch or two away from breaking a record of 7.4 inches of snow in one day. The school closings were pouring in. By 7pm, pretty much every school district in the Dallas/Fort Worth and surrounding areas were going to be closed that Friday. I honestly felt like a kid waiting to hear if I had to go to school or not.  When they got to company closings, mine wasn't listed. About 8:30 I got a text from a co-worker that we were closed the next day. I doubled checked and called the bad weather hotline. Sure enough, we got a "snow day". Wahoo! Most of my friends on Facebook were updating their statuses that their offices were closed the next day (I did have a few friends that had to go in, but they got a late start).  

As late as 10:30pm I looked outside and it was still snowing. The next morning I woke up and was amazed at how much snow was on the ground.

This poor tree is never going to be the same after all this snow.

 

 Outside my balcony

Outside my window. The tree to the right lost a lot of limbs due to the snow.

The field across the street.

 In my front yard, almost 13 inches of snow!

 A view of the street

  A neighbor kid convinced me to make a snow angel..that was cold! Jeans and snow are NOT a warm combo, just FYI!!

My snow angel..my first one since 1985!

 Our poor, poor trees!!

Steps back up to my apartment. It took a while to get down them!