For those reading this from outside Madison, here’s some data from the Isthmus about our recent streak of bad weather. Yesterday’s 13 inches of snow was the second-highest snowfall from a single storm ever recorded here. Classes were cancelled at UW for only the third time in the last twenty years. With six weeks of winter left to go, 2007-08 is two and a half inches away from being the snowiest winter on record. (78-79 holds the current mark.) On I-90 a little south of here, just past Stoughton, somewhere between a thousand and two thousand people were stopped behind trucks that couldn’t make it up a long, low hill; the backup started in the middle of the afternoon and some people were still there at 4am. Governor Doyle called out the National Guard to patrol the edge of the highway in snowmobiles, passing out blankets and army rations.
Some good snow pictures from the always-on-the-scene Letter from Here.
As for me, I spent an hour this morning digging out Mrs. Q’s plowed-in car. But after I finished digging — or at least dug until I thought I was finished — her car was still stuck in the snow, wheels spinning helplessly. Fortunately, we soon saw another plow, whose driver hitched his towline to the car and dragged it out of the snowbank. This was accomplished in a manner suggesting a much-repeated task.
Quomodocumque 