A Big Long Post About Snow and Football

The state of Minnesota’s weather is always misconceived by people who live in other states. If you’ve never been here or lived here before, some people think that it’s cold and snowing here all year round but this weekend’s weather was exactly how other people out of state perceive Minnesota.

On Friday night, it started to snow and it didn't stop until Saturday night, but not before accumulating anywhere from 17-20 inches at my house. The media kept referring to the storm as a blizzard and I wanted to know exactly what the definition of a blizzard is so here are the two meanings I've found:

What is a blizzard?

There are two somewhat different meanings for the word "blizzard". "Blizzard conditions" technically occur when strong winds (at least 35 mph) combine with either falling snow or snow on the ground to reduce visibilities to 1/4 mile or less for at least three hours. According to this definition, blizzard conditions can occur without any falling snow -- it is just severe blowing snow. This is sometimes referred to as a "ground blizzard".

The other common meaning of "blizzard" is a strong winter cyclone event producing large snowfall accumulations, usually combined with strong winds causing blowing and drifting of snow.

STUCK BETWEEN HIGH AND LOW PRESSURE- Blizzard winds are created when a strong low pressure area is close to a strong high pressure area. The air "tries" to flow from high pressure to low pressure, but the turning of the Earth causes the air to turn to the right (in the Northern Hemisphere), and the wind ends up flowing around the low pressure area, rather than directly toward it.

And while I’m at it, here’s the definition of wind chill:

The temperature of windless air that would have the same effect on exposed human skin as a particular combination of wind speed and air temperature. As the wind blows faster, heat is lost more quickly from exposed skin, making a person feel colder even though the air temperature remains the same.

When I was a kid, I called it “windshield” because that’s what I thought people were saying. I have to stop and think before I say “wind chill” because I still want to say “windshield”.

This winter storm was the 5th largest in Minnesota history, which means I now remember 3 of the top 5....The Halloween snow storm of 1991 that dropped 28.4 inches in the Twin Cities and I vaguely remember the snowstorm in January 1982. We received something like 20 inches on January 20th and another 22 inches on January 22nd. My birthday is in between those dates and no one showed up for my 5th birthday party because of the snow. Poor me.

M and I didn’t leave the whole weekend, the same as a lot of people I assume. We didn’t have or need to go anywhere because we stocked up on everything we needed on Friday night and frankly, wouldn’t even have been able to leave until yesterday afternoon when our 100 foot driveway was finished being shoveled mostly by M and a little bit by me in sub zero temperatures and wind chills. I peeked out the window at one point and saw M lying in the snow bank. I assumed he was just resting from shoveling so I thought I would take a picture of him from the window with his bundle of clothing and deer hunting garb on. I took a few pictures of him and then hung around the kitchen tidying up and looked out again later and he was still lying there. Then I started to get concerned that he had just had a heart attack from shoveling snow.  I opened up the door and jokingly but yet serious, yelled, “Are you dead?!” He popped his head up so that was a good sign. Just resting. 

Looking out from our window- Can't see the driveway at all.  Look at how much snow is on the upper left deck across the street at the apartments

"Are you dead?!"

So what did I do all weekend? Cleaned a little, did some laundry, watched a movie and some TV, baked chocolate chip cookies, made tacos and a pasta salad and watched football…football from home when we were supposed to be at the Vikings game on Sunday.

Now unless you live somewhere with no access to the media or you do not pay attention to football, the Vikings game was postponed from Sunday at noon to Monday night due to weather and the New York Giants plane diverting to Kansas City due to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport either being closed or intermittently open with only one working runway which had to be shut down about

every 30 minutes to plow the snow off of it. Oh, and then there was some concern of the safety of the Metrodome due to the massive amounts of snow on the inflatable roof.

So, around 5 am on Sunday morning, the dome’s Teflon roof collapsed and tore open in three areas.

This amazing video shows it all:

The rescheduled Monday night Vikings game to be played at the Metrodome was now rescheduled to be played in Detroit at Ford Field. Ah, nothing like a “home” game being played in another city’s house, which also happens to be in your division. The Vikings lost to the Giants 21-3, in a pathetic outing.  It was announced shortly before the game that Favre would not start, which snapped his streak for consecutive starts at 297.  I can now say that I saw Favre's last consecutive game against the Bills last week and it's possible that was the last game of his career.    

Being that M is a Vikings season ticket owner, he’ll be “refunded” the cost of the tickets for tonight's game which actually means that he’ll get a credit towards 2011’s season tickets for this game, however it is still up in the air as to where next Monday night's game will be played depending on whether the U of M's TCF Stadium can make all the accommodations as well as whether the dome can be repaired quickly enough, but the home games for me and the Vikings might be done for this year. 

Here is a picture of the Metrodome that M took today on his lunch break:

How was your commute today?  I spent just over 3 hours in the car today between my morning and evening commute.  Here's hoping for a better Tuesday drive.  I did see multiple one car accidents, involving a car and a snow bank.  I got a picture of one of them.