Chicago Blizzard Photos ~ Again

The Chicago Blizzard of February 2011, yeah, yeah, yeah. When all was said and done, its 20.2 inches has been labeled the third biggest snowfall in Chicago history with January 1967's 23 inches and January 1999's 21.6 inches taking first and second. Perhaps y'all have heard enough about it but I'm not quite finished sharing photos with you.

The first three were taken of our back yard Wednesday night. I thought the light interestingly illuminated the shapes of the drifts. In the center photo you can clearly see the area where the wind flattened the snow between our deck and the first of the undulating drifts. In that same photo, all that remains of Rich's attempt to walk across the golf course are those two indents where he first stepped into the drift. The winds that had continued throughout the day had completely filled in the spot where he stood.

 

Thursday morning, like around 8 a.m. or some other ungodly early hour, I took this next photo trying to capture the sparkles on the snow when the temps are several degrees below zero, which they were then. Many years ago, before we were married, I picked Rich up at the St. Louis airport after his red-eye flight landed and we drove to Jacksonville just after sunrise on a snowy sub zero morning. All the fields we passed, for all those miles, sparkled like millions of diamonds had been scattered across. I'll never forget that splendid sight! I took lots of photos yesterday morning trying to capture those sparkling pinpoints of light but this is the best I could get.  

The sun and shadows yesterday morning made for other beautiful sights too, like this view looking across our neighbor's back yard.

Early afternoon, when we were leaving for an appointment in a neighboring town, these were taken of Rich in our driveway and of our front yard completely filled with snow.

When you see the enormous hills of snow piled up by the plows, it becomes clear why this is such a problem for the city where there is simply no place to put this much snow. Here are views of plowed snow piled along our street and the street coming into our development...

By the time we returned home, a tunnel had been dug through the snow to clear our sidewalk up to the front door. Our niece has commented that her boys would have loved to play in all this snow so they will surely get a kick out of seeing just how deep it is in our front yard. My brothers used to dig igloos in mounds of snow that they shoveled out of our folks' driveway...I wish they and all of our little ones could be here to create such fun memories out of these snow mounds!

Lovin' Life ~~ And All This Snow!

  Bev