The Blizzard of 2013 - Part 1

Famous last words...

Words you wish you could take back...

Understatement of the century...

Biting your tongue...

These are all phrases that I think could accurately title this post. It probably doesn't make sense but it will in a moment. See, before the weather turned, we were having BEAUTIFUL fall days. Days that I had been dreaming about having since we moved back to Rapid City. We didn't have the luxury of 4 seasons in Laramie so this change of seasons was something I was really looking forward to this year.

We had been hearing that we would be getting some snow in the coming weekend and knowing South Dakota weather like I (thought I) did and knowing the "dependability" of weather forecasting, I immediately started scoffing at the idea that we would be getting inches of snow. It was barely October forheavenssake. I loudly proclaimed to anyone who asked, that there was no way Rapid City would see any accumulation of snow. If we were "lucky", we would see a dusting of snow and the Hills would see probably a few inches. In my experience, this seemed to usually be the case. Call it what you will...a few too many disappointments of waking up to no snow after promises of a snow day, maybe...Perhaps I thought if my opposition was heard in the heavens, my fall wouldn't be rudely interrupted (note to self: throwing a tantrum is not the way to get things...hmmm, that sounds familiar...) but I was HUGELY skeptical that our fall would be sliced and diced by a winter storm. It just wasn't going to happen.

Thursday night: It's raining. As predicted by the weatherman. My thoughts were "yep, this looks about right." I don't see the rain turning into snow. It was thundering and lightening even. Definitely not going to snow...

Friday morning: Still raining. Oh those weatherman have to be feeling so sheepish right now, I thought. I start putting together a new recipe in the crockpot for homemade pumpkin spice lattes. (It was gross but it did make the house smell nice.)

A little later Friday morning: Flurries begin. Well I guess this is the beginning of our dusting...except that it was falling hard. The flurries quickly turned into BIG GIANT snowflakes...which were actually quite pretty.

I get a phone call from my dad, "Fill up buckets of water" he says. Apparently if we lost electricity we wouldn't be able to flush the toilet so just in case, we filled up a few wastebaskets of water and left them in the tub.

We made this new recipe called Pumpkin Spice Quinoa or something like that for breakfast. (The picture looked better than it actually tasted. Yuck.)

I try to get some work done in my office.

10:00 am Our electricity turns off.

The snow is accumulating quickly and it is HEAVY. Branches are weighing down already. The house quickly becomes chilly and we decide that we should head to my parent's house. They have a wood burning stove so at least we will be warm even though we won't have lights.

We throw all our dishes in the sink. Grab a bag of clothes. Hop in the car and quickly realize that there is a lot of snow.

Branches are already breaking and we decide that rather than leave our car at my parents where it would be parked under a big cottonwood tree, DJ would drop us off, drive back to the house (which is right next door), and run back over to my parent's.

DJ's words upon arriving back to my parent's "I felt like it was Armageddon out there." Hm, maybe this storm was going to be more than a dusting after all. Actually it already was. There was probably at least a foot of snow at that point. It was thundering and lightening. (I discovered this phenomenon is called Thundersnow and it's quite rare. But it happened constantly throughout this blizzard.) HUGE branches were falling and if you saw the meadow that DJ ran through to get to my parent's after driving home, it's somewhat of a miracle that he wasn't taken out on his way back. In that meadow, a few days later, we found a branch about the width of my leg, that had fallen from a tree and buried into the ground about 30 inches. We have a picture but you'll just have to trust me for now. Branches the size of whole trees were cracking, which sounded like gun shots, and then falling all around the entire property. It was surreal.

We hung out around the stove at my parent's for awhile and chatted, played and ate some food (which we quickly realized we should ration because we didn't have a way to cook food, given that the range at my parent's house was electric. We did decide to try to cook the pot of stew that my mom had started before the electricity went off on the wood stove but that didn't last long because...) my dad casually mentions that if the ginormous cottonwood tree that stands right next to the house fell on the house, it would take out the entire wall, fall on the stove and we would burn up along with the house. Thanks Dad. Nothing like calming a mother's fears for her children's safety as we decide what to do in this crazy storm. Well I immediately start questioning our decision about coming to my parent's house. At least we had a gas range at our house...

Then my dad is called out somewhere, maybe to help one of the tenants, I can't remember (for those who aren't familiar with my parent's property -  they own a campground with about 30 RV sites, about 25 cottages and 3 lodges/homes that are fully furnished and individually functional, i.e. they all have their own utilities, bedrooms, kitchens, etc. They rent them monthly in the winter and nightly in the summer. In the fall most are monthly but some are still nightly as they transition monthly renters in. So in addition to making sure their own family is safe in this storm, my parents had to manage tons of phone calls from worried tenants wondering what happened to their electricity, why can't they watch tv, etc...super fun). My dad returns from his "outing" and states that we are moving out. The size of trees that he had seen falling over and broken off had him worried that the cottonwood might actually fall on the house and burn us alive (he didn't say it like that but that's what I heard) so we had to get out NOW. If you know my Dad, you knows his concern is cause for your concern; he's not easily excitable about these sorts of things. Oh my goodness, if I was worried before, I was frantic now. DJ had been taking a nap. Yes, a nap. (How can someone sleep in the middle of such excitement??) I was immediately yelling at him to get up, get the kids, get our stuff. We are GETTING OUT! This was exactly what I had been thinking since our previous conversation about falling trees and burning up and now I had someone else thinking the same thing so that was that.

Except... where to?

We played around with a few ideas (...in the midst of chaos... because my dad decided to go back outside, I have no idea why, but I was constantly concerned about anyone who ventured outside because seriously the branches that were falling were big and continuously falling) and then someone mentioned that one of the cabins was empty, has a gas fireplace, still has electricity somehow and is just a couple of rows (streets) over. Instead of driving far in this snow and being too far from our homes in case my parents are needed at the property or we need something from our houses, we decided the cabin was the best place to go. This ended up being the best decision ever.

So the plan is to move. This is when it gets crazy. We all get into my mom's Denali (except for my dad who is going to clear branches) and we take off. Except we don't get far because the roads are blocked. We start one way and then back the car up, try something else...DJ hops out to help my dad move branches. We try driving another way only to find it is blocked by an entire tree that has fallen across the street and onto a building. We check. Nope, our car is too tall to fit underneath. We back up. Go back to the first way we had attempted and realize this. is. it. I'm practically in tears, clutching my children. Jayden and Ava somehow know that it is best to stay silent as they watch us adults try to find a way out of this mess. DJ and my dad are hauling branches out of the way. My mom guns the car like she's taken some James Bond class that I wasn't aware existed and we fly over the branches and take off to the cabin. My dad and DJ can walk. (They told us to do this; we didn't just leave them unknowingly in our determined attempt to save the children.)

We turn down the road that will take us to the front of the cabin. It's blocked. More trees down. My mom then remembers that we knew this (from my dad's previous outing) and realizes she was supposed to go to the backside. We're so frantic to get inside to safety that we aren't thinking clearly. Since we got into the car I've been expecting a branch to come crashing onto our roof at any moment. She turns the car around and we see DJ and my dad coming our way, confused about what we are doing. We tell them our mistake and head back out on the main road to go to the back of the cabin. We are careful to find a place to park that is not below a tree and prepare ourselves to walk through what is now at least 2 feet of snow to the cabin. We have less than 50 yards to cross before we are inside. I grab a kid (Jayden I think), someone gets Ava (not important that I can't remember who has her, just that someone has her...) and we dash knee deep into the snow around the cabin, up the steps onto the deck and finally, safely, into the cabin. I'm not sure about everyone else but I felt a huge sense of relief as soon as we set foot in that cabin.

But the fun wasn't over yet. My mom and I stayed to get the kids settled and my dad, and DJ too I think, went back out to do whoknowswhat (I never fully understood the need to get back out into blizzard where branches were falling like manna from heaven)...and while they were gone, a tree fell on the cabin. Only I didn't realize that's what happened. That was probably a good thing, considering how anxious I already was about everything that had just happened. I heard the thud but I just thought that a branch had fallen onto the deck. I could see out the window that the deck we had just walked across was now engulfed by huge branches. We had a tunnel of branches and leaves that we had to walk through to get in and out of the cabin. It stayed like this for a few days until the branches could be cut down. I learned about the "tree on the roof" thing the next day. Apparently it's a good thing those cabins were so well built because roofs have collapsed with less laying on top than what our roof had on it. At one point, my grandpa asked my dad if he could hear the roof creaking and that freaked. me. out. That was asked a day or two later when the tree was still laying on the roof.

My dad and DJ came back inside a short while later and we get settled into our little 3 bedroom cottage. We had plugged in the roaster of stew that we had been attempting to cook on the wood stove earlier, so we were able to eat some dinner. I don't remember what we did next but all of a sudden the electricity turned off. Seriously. We all groaned because we were all probably thinking how close we had come to not losing electricity at all but on the other hand, we were wondering how long it would be till we got it back. Obviously at this point we knew, given how bad it was just in our little part of the city, that the power was going out all over the city. It would take awhile for the power company to fix all of that. So we got the kids into bed and the adults sat around wondering if 8 o'clock was too early for bed. As we re-adjusted our mental states to this dark silence - no tv, very little light, just the glow from the fireplace - we had time to contemplate the change that was upon us. We listened to the thunder, the cracking of the branches (the two sounds were very hard to tell apart) and our whispers and we somehow knew even in this first day of the storm that what we were experiencing would change things for quite a while.

And I started realizing that I should have kept my big mouth shut the day before when I was convinced that we would barely get a dusting of snow.

Hrmph.

But we were safe. We were together. We were warm. Our stomachs were even full since my mom had the foresight to start the stew earlier that morning. We would come to find out that we were rich compared to others who would spend the night stranded in their cars because even fire engines couldn't make it through the snow to save the people. Social media kept us updated on the experiences that people were going through - no electricity for people on oxygen, a baby hungry because the babysitter is out of formula and the mom is stranded at work, people all over the city placed on a ban from the roads because the trees and the snow and the wind made it impossible to get anywhere. We had no reason to complain because a couple of hours later our electricity miraculously turned back on. And it stayed on for the rest of the time.

(To be continued...)