So how did everyone do during the weather resulting from last week's polar vortex? Here, what a difference less than a week makes. This past Sunday, we had plummeting temperatures, falling into the single-digits Fahrenheit, and about a foot of snow, as noted by the Post-Dispatch here, for one. Now, at the end of the week, after loads of rain yesterday and temperatures hitting the high 40's-low 50's today, most of the snow is gone. (The water table should be pretty happy for the moment. All that water from global warming and the melting polar ice caps did have to go somewhere, after all.)
If self were to be truly a loser, he would provide some sort of story for the week about how the weather caused some sort of pathetic loserness for 3CM (on a trivial scale, of course) this week, per SNLC tradition. Well, sorry, guys, not quite. More, such as it is, below the flip.....
If anything, the big loser from Snowpocalypse 2014, STL version, is the city government, because of the slow snow removal from residential streets, as noted in this Post-Dispatch article. This P-D editorial quotes Jeff Rainford, chief of staff to STL Mayor Francis Slay, as follows:
"“We had the overconfidence to believe that for the first time in the city’s history we could also take care of the side streets, as well as the main routes. In retrospect, it was not wise. We should have stuck to the snow routes until they were done.”
One guy who's actually kind of 'happy', in a
schadenfreude way, is the president of the STL Board of Aldermen, Lewis Reed, who wrote a letter to the
P-D editor
, which reads in part:
"But at some point, we must also face the facts and say what every observer knows to be true: the city of St. Louis was not prepared for a storm of this magnitude. We did not have a plan or strategy that worked."
However, you have to know that by "we", Reed really means Mayor Slay. Reed lost last year's mayoral election to Slay.
Going back to the P-D editorial, it notes further:
"Instead of following the traditional plan of putting all of the city’s snow-plow assets on main routes, some of them were diverted to side streets to dump salt and chemicals which, because of the quick drop in temperature, were basically useless.
The lost hours left main routes clogged with snow, ice and slush even as residents who saw plows go by on their side streets were left wondering what was happening."
Where I live is fairly close to a main artery, so obviously the main artery got first treatment, and my street looked like a mess, as it usually does after a snow, even one not as huge as this past one. But as long as I can get to the main artery, then things are more or less OK. In fact, that was probably close to the worst thing that happened to me this past week. I actually had to go to the post office twice this week, on successive days, this past Monday and Tuesday. Monday, of course, had the worst impact of the snow on the road, since it was the first day after the full level of the snow. The first post office turned out to be closed on Monday, but the next one that I tried was open, so I got to mail my package. On Tuesday, the first post office from the Monday try did open up after all. The point (again, trivial; this is Loser's Club, after all) is that I did need to brave the roads to get my packages mailed out, fortunately successfully. I did shovel the side walk in front of my building, and also near my garage door in my unit, in an attempt to get some exercise without having a heart attack. Others in the neighborhood had a bit more trouble with cars, as I lent a tiny hand, along with random neighbors, to help several cars that got stuck in the road near my place, when I was out shoveling snow.
One other interesting point about the impact of the local snow comes from this observation about STL in particular, regarding cars, parking and plowing:
"Here’s what makes St. Louis different than many other cities and suburbs: It relies heavily on on-street parking. Many residential streets are too narrow to accommodate cars, snow plows, and the mounds of snow that would need to be pushed to one side or the other."
I knew that there was a reason why I plunked down the extra money years back for a place with a garage, rather than a cheaper place where I would have had to rely on street parking. I was also able to work from home the first part of the week, but only after I drove back to work to get my work laptop after forgetting it on Friday night. Major mental disconnect at the time that I didn't think to bring the laptop with me on that night, even after reading about the snow forecast on weather.com at work, but without really grasping the implications and thinking ahead.
That would really have been loser, not to be able to work from home at the start of the week when I could have easily.
Some aerial pictures of the STL area post-snowfall are visible here from Laurie Skrivan of the P-D. The snow scapes actually looked impressive, pre-plowing, in its pristine state, as snow so often does. Cleaning it up, with all the displaced dirt and such, doesn't look so pretty, of course. Who knows what it will all be like with the next storm this winter.
With that, if you have any loser stories for the week related to the polar vortex, feel free to share below. Or not :) .