Anhydrous Wit

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Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Snow Day

It rained all morning on Monday.  After a brief spot of sun, it started snowing.  (See my previous post.)  My boss let us go home early (especially me, as I have such a long commute).

The drive home was awful.  Nearer Santa Fe, the same idiots who exceed the speed limit on dry, sunny days didn't seem to think it was hazardous to do so in dark, wet, marginally freezing conditions.  The usual idiots who drive in the dark with their headlights off also were on the road.  Oh well, as a former coworker was fond of saying, "You can't fix stupid."  (I'm fond of saying, "When they take themselves out, I hope they don't take anyone else with them.")

About halfway to Albuquerque, the snow got heavier, and other drivers finally started slowing down.  At my exit (the first one on the N side of ABQ), the snow was blowing so thickly that we were at just 25 mph.  The two-lane road I take through the reservation was almost invisible.  (Thankfully, the drivers coming from the other direction were just as eager to stay on their side of the road as I was on mine.)  Once I got home, I pulled my car into the garage, retrieved the mail, and brought in the recycling polycart.  I then hunkered down for the night.

I decided not to try driving to work on Tuesday.  Still, I got up early to shovel.  I was very surprised to see the street mostly clear-to-slushy, and some of our sidewalk was free of snow already.  By the afternoon, it was warm (46 degrees) and sunny, so I refueled my car (which I couldn't do during the snowstorm the night before) and also took my mom to the grocery store (ditto).

When I arrived in Santa Fe this morning, I was surprised to see that all the snow had melted.  There's still a lot of snow in my mom's section of Albuquerque.  It just goes to show that snowfall in NM can be as spotty as rainfall.  In fact, when you head just a mile west of my mom's house, the snow had mostly melted by the time I went to gas up.  (A significant elevation drop probably is responsible, as my mom's house is more-or-less near the foothills of the mountains, and most of the city is not.)  One of the TV weather people showed a striking image (I'm not sure if it was a capture of the radar as snow fell, or if it was a picture of the relative accumulations afterward) which indicated that the entire half of the city west of Interstate 25 didn't get any snow at all.

So, it appears that my caution wasn't warranted (although I really couldn't head in to work without refueling).  Still, better safe than sorry.

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