Good luck seeing the corner.
Southeast side of Super 8. The van is not doing so well.
Maybe they missed the whole blizzard warning thing. Notice the other car towards the left side, much more snow and it'd be invisible.
I remembered seeing a "microwave" in my room, so while at the gas station I grabbed a sandwhich. I put it in there and went to close the door and noticed the door was a bit heavy. It's a darn safe! I don't want a safe, I want to nuke my sandwhich.
After eating my cold sandwhich I head back out for more. Earlier I was using the back window to shoot out of since the front was frozen. Well while pushing the buttons I must have made the passenger side one go down a ways. The front and back are now covered in a layer of snow.
Oh and before this while shooting I noticed a glove flying down the parking lot and laughed at it. Then I thought I had better check my pockets. It was my glove! "Haha" now. My other was nowhere to be found either. So my fun was now starting to turn on me. Lose gloves, leave window down and try to nuke a sandwhich in a safe. This "fun" has only just begun :(. I have to remind myself I drove to this location to be a part of it too. We chasers must be stupid folks, to go out of our way to increase the odds of having problems. I would not have traded this trip of anything, it was honestly that much fun. There is something about experiencing stormy weather, any stormy weather.
The mistake. On the bright side it was only down that far.
The calm side of the motel.
Now for the next problem. While getting back into the vehicle I lose the door in the wind and this bends the hinge plates out away from the frame. I lifted up and down on the door and tried to push sideways on it and nothing. It was always this dead stop, like the latch was hitting something. Well the latch area on the door that goes over the post on the frame wasn't lined up right. It was trying to go over the very end of the post which it can't because it attaches to the frame at the end. Hmmmmm, not good. Not wanting to mess with it in a raging blizzard I try to rig it to at least stay closed overnight.
I looked around the truck for something and all that I could find was my extra sony charger. Tying frozen electrical cord is not a blast by any stretch. I won't say how long I was at it. First I tied it with the steering wheel up so that it was not tight..@$#@$@. So I got to undo it and make sure the wheel was down. Finally got it all redone and lifted the wheel up and was good to go.
This kept most of the snow out overnight.
My new shooting location as the vehicle was no longer a great option.
It is now late afternoon Monday the 28th. This pole was kind of funny how much it was twisting and shaking in the wind.
Cool sculpted drifts reaching up towards the roof in an area on the west side of the motel. These are now basically ramps for the snow to go up onto the roof and on over to the vehicles still parked by the building. The sign on the door is kind of funny. It says, "checking out?, we need your keys." Well there was certainly no checking out of that door.
The power is out now, but only to one half of the motel, thankfully not my half....yet.
Bye bye cars. If you left your car there all day you deserve this. I drove around town the next day and many driveways were just like this. I should have taken more images of them but didn't as people were out in them.
Now late evening on Monday, night 2 in the motel. It was still a wind machine but the snow fall was letting up, though it was hard to really tell much of a difference. I'm not sure but they may have extended the blizzard warning overnight instead of letting it expire at midnight. Either way that is one long blizzard warning.
I walked over to the gas station, not realizing they didn't have power. They were still nice enough to sell food, via a small calculator.
Ok, when the one half went out my room was fine, except I noticed that my heater was not running and must have been fed by the same power as that half of the motel. I heard a boom earlier in the evening before that half went out. Anyway, power quickly went out and came right back on numerous times from Sunday night through Monday evening. All that time I was amazed that I wasn't losing it for good. Well I was sitting here chatting online when it went black and stayed black. I was like, darn it I just lost that battle. Then they come on, but really dim. Then they start surging up and down. It was quite spooky.
So, I had already lost the power to the heater and now whatever feeds this is screwed up. BUT, lol, I am still able to chat. I was laughing like, you can't kill my ability to chat and be online! Then they'd go black and stay there for a bit only to light back up some. I try the switch in the bathroom, looking for a new source of power for the laptop. Well hell those lights are perfectly fine. So I power the laptop in the bathroom.
Freaky.
Logging back into chat only to quickly get disconnected. Right about this time everything goes black but my laptop, which is of course now running on the battery.
Nightshot of the lack of light. I stumble over my chair while filming the darkness. All you can do now is listen to the erie wind howling through the screen.
Life without all our entertainment and information items that run on electricity sure would be tough. I sat there thinking about it as that was all I could do. Then I thought, hey, I bet the radio in here runs on battery power. Well it does when there is one in it! What I would have given for a 9 volt battery right then.
Here is an interesting thing. I've never really thought about it. It shows why not to count on a cell phone when traveling in bad weather. If you were stuck out on a highway in this right now you'd be screwed as you certainly wouldn't be calling anyone to tell them.
I was really tired and finally give up trying to find something to do. I fall asleep only to wake up about an hour later to lights and a radio. I was shocked. I think what probably happened was the power company probably shut the stuff off to fix the problems. They could really only work in town at this point anyway.
Tuesday morning, November 29. Snow is done and the wind is a lot better. The problem was the large number of roads remaining closed. Most of I-80 in NE was even closed.
So I guess this is what happens with 9 inches of snow but 75 mph winds.
Before worrying too much about my road problems I had to figure out the door problem I still had. I did not think I'd be able to fix it. What is harder than tying semi-frozen power cords? Un-tying frozen power cords. I pulled those suckers tight too. It was a blast getting that mess undone.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I fixed it!
Right before I fix it I fell on my butt. Not sure if I forgot it was icy or what but I stepped onto the 'pavement' and fell harder than I have ever fallen before. I'm pretty sure my left elbow touched the ground first. I got right up though, hoping no one saw that. I look around and sure enough a trucker walking to his truck was looking at me. I thought for sure this was a sign of things to come when going to fixt the door.
If you are cheap and stubborn like me you'll at least try in vain to do something that you'd otherwise have to pay someone to do. Knowing the problem is half the battle. I must thank Caleb in chat for the brain storming and answer. I knew it was the latch area but couldn't tell if the latch thing was broken and malfunctioning or what. Talking about it in chat we thought maybe the post wasn't lining up exactly right even though it looked to go right in the notch. So thinking about it that night I really thought that was the problem. That plate bent away from the frame enough to make the end of the post 1/4 inch off. When I looked at it from another angle it was clear the latch/notch was hitting on the very tip of the post. I tried lifting up and pulling down on the door incase it was just off a bit that way but it wasn't. How to flatten that plate back was the problem. Where it is located there is no using a hammer without taking the door off. I looked for something and found these channel locks. I tried putting them in the hinge bracket and pulling around and it seemed pointless. Then I simply stuck it in there and pulled the door closed. You can see here how this would work. With some good pulling it flattened it back down like a charm! Things never work out like that for me.
I guess here is my one regret of the trip. I wanted a lot of pictures of big drifts but the roads were all a lot worse than I had expected. My motel room was still without cable and internet. I sat in there after fixing the door and figured I didn't want to be there another night, especially with not much to do. I didn't know how bad the roads were but couldn't stay in the room past check out time to wait and find out. So I packed everything up and left. I drove up town again and was in the way too much, as every street was a mess. I had a fun enough time experiencing the storm and documenting it the best I could so I said to hell with sticking around any longer. I figured 20/275 to Norfolk wasn't that bad as people were making it to O'Neill from there now. Here is mainstreet in O'neill. The pile in the middle is taller than the Blazer.
Area between Neligh and O'Neill.
Most of this tree damage was this way as I came up here.
This was a really impressive storm. Severe icing followed by a severe blizzard. Icing started mid-day on Sunday and the blizzard side started to wind down Tuesday morning(basically a 48 hour storm). Tornadoes occured in several states on Sunday. Severe winds in areas recieving no fashion of precip. I think somewhere in west TX had an 89mph wind gust with the passage of the front. I-70 in western KS and eastern CO was shut down for quite a while. I-80 through most of NE was shut down. I-90 through most of SD was shut down. I-29 through most of SD was shut down. Normally missing out on chasing tornadoes would bug the hell out of me when I decided not to chase. I am very glad I chased the blizzard as it was a long duration, very interesting experience unlike I've ever had.
2 wind turbines at Ainsworth recorded 114 mph gusts 200 feet off the ground!
The last image is an icy field west of Norfolk somewhere.
I'd like to thank my parents for allowing me to borrow and abuse their Blazer like I did. I am sure I'll ask again.
I think the weather/snow is following me around now. Since the November 12 IA tornadoes I've seen it snow here twice, saw this blizzard in nc NE, and a day after being back home it is snowing hard out right now. I guess I'll post those next/tomorrow. Snow is only cool when it is early in the season and/or extreme. I will be very very sick of this soon now.
