If the weather reports are to be believed we’re going to get hit hard from Sunday afternoon through Monday morning. It looks like the worse of this storm is going to hit us directly with a combination of freezing rain and heavy snow, with the possibility of up to 24 inches of snow total.
All the towns around here have already declared states of emergency and put on street parking bans into effect, businesses are already announcing closures, etc.
The thing is, though, I’m not sure any longer if I can believe anything the weather reports tell us. They’ve completely blown just about every forecast for significant weather events here for the entire winter. Predicted “massive snow storms” have turned into an hour or so of a rather gentle rain or a light dusting of snow.
Anyway, we’ll see. Come Monday if you see a selfie pop up here of an old, overweight, white haired bearded guy standing up to his eyebrows in a snowdrift, you’ll know the weather service finally got something right.
We’re about as ready for it as we can be here. The snowblower is gassed up and ready to go. The batteries for the solar power system are fully charged and those can carry the house for about 24 hours if the power goes out, and if that’s not enough, we have the old Generac generator and extra gasoline to recharge the batteries if we need to.
If we do get hammered, I am not optimistic about what’s going to happen to our power. Just some 50 mph wind gusts down in the Milwaukee area yesterday or the day before knocked out power to over 20,000 people. The last time we had a significant late season snowstorm it knocked out power to almost the entire northern third of the state for days in some areas. Sherwood, a small town about three miles from here, didn’t have power for 3 or 4 days, for heaven’s sake.