BLIZZARD!!

They're real!　
(and, no joke, that's these are the graphics for today's weather!)

Okay, so call me a naive California girl, but I always just kind of assumed "blizzards" were made up. You know, like the Abominable Snowman (think of that claymation Rudolph movie)! Well, today I learned I was VERY wrong!!

I did a quick Google to make sure today's weather is what one technically calls a blizzard:

BLIZZARD: Snow with winds in excess of 35 mph and visibilities of 1/4 mile or less, for an extended period of time (eg. > 3 hours).

Let's see, the general consensus from the weather sites is that the wind in the cities nearest me was up to 50mph. I suspect they were even stronger here, because my little town has no trees or anything to act as windbreaks, but regardless, 50mph winds are CRAZY! I know they don't register on the hurricane or the tornado scales (well, F-0 on the tornado scale is "up to 72mph"), but it WOULD be enough to call it a tropical storm if it were, in fact, a tropical storm (it's not). Anyway, so 50mph wind, and the average temperature today was somewhere around 28deg F, but with the windchill factor, they say it "feels like" 13deg. Oh, and let's not forget the SNOW (aka ice daggers that will blind you if you open your eyes too wide!). It snowed in various degrees today, somehow always managing to dump whenever I had to run from my car to a building or vice versa. This morning, when I had to go literally around the corner from the board of education office to an elementary school, the snow was coming down SO heavily and the wind was SO crazy, that one and a half minutes was terrifying. I could barely see 10ft in front of the car!

So, winds in excess of 35mph? CHECK!
Visibilities of 1/4mi or less? CHECK!
Extended period of time? CHECK!! (at least since it woke me up at 5am and it's still going strong at 8pm)

It's a BLIZZARD!!!
My first one! If it wasn't so loud and throwing ice against my windows and making scary noises, it might be kind of exciting.


Definitely on the downside, I couldn't go to karate tonight because I figured a 20min drive in this weather with my snow-driving skills would be certain death. I hope the weather's better next week!