Stranded in Iowa

It's been a while since I've experienced a good old-fashioned blizzard.  I guess that's something you give up when you move into a city.  I've kind of forgotten what a real snowstorm is.  Today I had my memory refreshed: it's below-zero windchills, HUGE windgusts, many inches of snow, and drifts that you can't drive a minivan through.

This weekend we came down to Iowa to my parents' house for Christmas.  My sister & her family didn't even make it because of the blizzard warning that was being posted. (They have a cabin rented in Tennessee for this week and were afraid that if they came up here, they wouldn't be able to make it down there.)  We also knew of the blizzard warning, so had pretty much come into the weekend knowing that we may not be able to get home on Sunday. 

We came down Friday night, which was surprisingly decent considering what it'd been like earlier in the day. (School had even been cancelled.)  Saturday had a lot of snow coming down & blowing around. My brother Moon and his family came from Des Moines (maybe 150 miles to the SE of here) and just barely beat the weather. My other brother Stephen & his family live just a few miles from here but they brought their jammies, just in case it got bad enough that they decided not to try to go home. And it turned out to be a good idea, as they did stay overnight.  It was actually kind of fun for us all to hang out.  The kids were all being good and the adults weren't really being cranky either. :)  We played a couple of games and watched the Cowboys get beat in the final game at Texas Stadium.

This morning church was cancelled due to the weather so we all slept in, which was nice!  We continued the eating-fest from yesterday and around 2:30 we decided we should try to get home.  We thought that maybe by this time the plows might have gotten out and cleared off the roads some.  When we turned out from my parents' farm onto the road, they really weren't bad except for some smaller drifts and the fact that visibility was low due to blowing snow.  But that's the kind of stuff that around here, you just drive in and if you don't do anything stupid you'll be fine.

We got about 10 miles from my parents' house and had driven through several drifts when we met one that our van couldn't defeat.  Unfortunately, we don't have 4-wheel-drive so once we were stuck that was basically it.  I think it was because of the lessened visibility that we didn't realize how big and deep this one was until we were in the middle of it. Fortunately for us, my brothers were nice enough to come & rescue us.  We got back to my parents' and looked online at the road conditions.  We'd been thinking about trying again and sticking to the more-traveled routes but decided to just stay put until tomorrow morning, as Rochester is under a Winter Storm Warning tonight until 6 pm and we only have a hour of daylight left.  It just didn't seem wise with these cold temps and kids in the car.

Normally missing work would not be an issue for me at all - you all know that I'm not very work-oriented.  However, I have pretty much zero vacation time, between being sick, having sick kids, taking time off to catch up on school, having to be home for the window installation guy, and doing my clinical chemistry rotation.  Oh yeah, and there are a couple of holidays coming up too.  So I hate to miss work, but I basically have no choice. I should be able to get in by noon tomorrow. 

I'd be much less annoyed if I could at least watch the Vikings game, but the DirecTV in this area doesn't offer local channels, and therefore my parents rarely get regional games.  Oh well. I guess I'll just hang out and maybe we can play a game later or something.

Wish us luck driving home tomorrow!