Last week Stacey came down with a bona fide case of influenza.  Sunday morning I woke up with similar symptoms.  For the first time ever, I had to miss a class at QU due to illness.  Fortunately, I had set up my class to visit the house of a friend where they would observe birds at her feeders.  That went off as planned.  My afternoon lab didn't meet at all, but it turned out that didn't matter.  With potentially two feet of snow and high winds in the forecast, QU canceled classes at 4. 
  
I had the foresight to switch my car for my truck, which I parked in the garage at home.  QU canceled Tuesday's classes, as expected, and the blizzard really started at about 10.  We had sustained 25 mph winds.  Stacey and I stayed home the entire day.  We were at least partly recovered from the flu by then.  We kept waiting to be called out on rescues, but none came for us.  Some of our friends in neighboring fire departments were called out, and got stuck.  They had to be fetched with backhoes. 

Wednesday morning the snow had stopped and the snow drifts lay deep everywhere. Classes were canceled again.  We wanted to go down to the fire department to switch out radios.  My truck couldn't make it out of the driveway in 4WD low.  It high-centered on the more than two feet of snow piled up at the end of the driveway by the snowplows.  We had to shovel some to get it out.  Then we shoveled and towed out a neighbor's car.  After we made it to the fire house, we shoveled out the drifts left in front of the firehouse bays.  And when we got home, we shoveled out the rest of the driveway to get the truck back in.  The roads were plowed fairly well, though tall walls of snow lined each street from the plowing.  Some places had very impressive drifts.  I took a few photos

From Winter 2011

Gretchen doesn't sink too deeply into the drifts.  Wind-blown snow is compact and heavy.

From Winter 2011

Front yard.

From Winter 2011

A buried car in downtown Canton.

There are a few more images if you click through to the Picasa album.  Classes are already canceled for tomorrow (Thursday).  They had officially 18 inches of snow in Quincy.  One of our friends measured 20 inches in Canton.  It's very difficult to get good measurements in these drifts.  In any case, this is the biggest snow storm on record since record keeping began in 1946.  Tomorrow we'll have to dig out Stacey's car.  We're not looking forward to it—our backs are already shot.