Albino Brain Chiggers!!!

Maddie and drift, originally uploaded by Robb23.

We don't get a ton of snow in central Ohio and that has been a great disappointment to me for almost 20 years. Our normal annual snowfall is around 28" and this year was looking to be pretty normal until the morning of March 7 when the Blizzard of 2008 struck. Officially at Port Columbus we recorded 20.4" from the storm, but exact totals in any given location are impossible to document because of the wind. All I'm sure of is that it was a lot - and something I surely have been missing since leaving the snow belt east of Cleveland. I celebrated by shoveling three driveways.

Columbus, of course, reacted the way we always do around here. We had 24 hour newscasts with live updates from the salt barn and interviews with the city's "snow warriors". (For the uninitiated, that's what we call guys who drive snow plows around here.) Today, four days after the storm, the city declared that they had managed to plow nearly every street in the city. Well they never hit my neighborhood, and the underbody on my wife's van can prove it, but by golly we got our use out of all 56 trucks this year. That's not nearly enough plow power in my opinion for a city with more lane miles than any other in the state. But on the other hand, one of the weather guys did point out that this was a 150 year storm. I guess you can't be prepared for everything.

I loaded 3 sets of pictures documenting the event. Click the Flickr link to the right and then look for the Blizzard 2008 Collection.