What's your most memorable blizzard ?

I think it was 00 or 01. Hit the snow in St. Joseph MO. Ran it all the way home. Had a chicken hauler on my back door went by Father Time on the radio. He was from Roland Oklahoma. Talked me all the way home. Lord only knows how grateful I am to have his experience behind me

 

1993, snow higher than two story houses except chimneys with fires going.

I drove on the third day post storm (Storm snowed 49 inches into our yard in 24 hours flat from nothing and the winds howled three days until the drifts buried everything, such as poles and wires 50 feet up and all houses two story and less. The silence from being buried was epic.

The third day I was on a two lane state road that took a front end loader 48 hours to partially open with a lane and change, slit of blue sky above walls of white. If you hit that ice and slid into it no one would find you. I70 had two feet of snow under a foot of slush, I slid out trying to merge at 40 because the right hand two lanes plus ramp was for all practical matter closed. The michelins with the hard traction compound paid for themselves that afternoon. And my family gave me a hard time with the #### things being a 100 per tire. I say stuff it. Glad we had em.

Now...

Active storms while trucking? Pick one. Any one. There was a rare utah storm that dumped a foot and change in a few hours on the road to vegas one afternoon and evening, we dared not stop because Nevada offered a escape from it once we got far enough south and west.

The rest of them I was usually either on Seven Mountains which is 322 PA south and east of State College or up fighting the Altoona hill which is next to and run via Babcock Ridge mountain which itself was a epic pull on ice. Looking back on it, my loyalty to mach CH's increase and how I was too stupid to be afraid (Much...) coming back down on ice while empty on a surface too slippery to walk on. If you managed to stop and then set brakes, it will continue to slide straight down brakes on and all locked wheels. So you cannot stop. The curve at the bottom always collected the worst of the ice precip and I needed both lanes (One of mine plus one of the upgrade lanes) to get around it because the trailer slid out far enough but we drag it around.

Finally but not last, I70. It's straight mostly, sorta but when the winter nor'easter show up the totality of the ice, snow and wind made for a truly filthy experience, which is not helped when a herd of cars behave badly around you trying to get to work. You are clocking in on time right? 7 and don't be late. That was one of the reasons I emigrated from Maryland, them timeclocks. They can have em. Here in Arkansas, the ice is bigger with the 2000 storm being the most memorable. No power, no water for three weeks and change that year. Commute? Forget it, get a cot in one of the patient rooms of the VA and we will see you sometime during the weekend. Cars spent the night trying to get home in 630 etc overnight and turned around to go a mile back to work after sleeping inside of them.

Finally before we finished our year on the intermountain rockies which I consider the uppger graduate type of trucking in winter using everything I learned over the decades to do it right. My spouse had no right to have to suffer the things she saw too her first year in training. Most trainees do not get to run the rockies unless they were born and raised there. Well this one did. And I had to teach her. Which was worse in a way because those of you marrieds know #### well wifes do not pay attention or listen sometimes.

With all that said, Mississippi gets the winter prize of all places. Ice storm shows up, all they do is dump sand a foot on each bridge then go home. YOU are left to also maybe stay home if you are smart but noo.. dispatch sends me into Miss to get loaded. There was a couple overnights I spend inside freaking intersections with 4 way stop signs around me because the slope of the land would slide the whole rig in high wind gusts towards a ditch to be overturned as a wake up call.

I don't know about you, but no one in school teaches anything about having to spend a night inside intersections on ice like that while sleeping. (You really don't you sit there waiting for the smash. 10 hours)

 

You can be in a blizzard just about anytime in Johnstown PA from Oct - April. I crawled up to the Pepsi plant and this is what I found.

 

There is one place in the USA that pretty much walks on my grave when I drive through MM12 to MM14 westbound near Sturgis.

Your picture does a good job describing a whiteout. It's a great picture.

With that in mind imagine that God just spray painted all of your windows until you could not see the mirrior brackets or hood or anything. (The 120 to the avatar to left is the one with a hood color hard to hide in winter) There I sit for about 40 minutes on the CB radio talking with anyone prior to 15 westbound to tell them to hold off and wait, and I was on part of the shoulder with everything else hanging to the right lane. I remember being afraid because if anyone hit that trailer they will simply die.

Once the river of whiteout between mountans ran out and we were able to see better, we kept westbound to try and get clear into better ground with less white out problems.

 

Halloween of 2000, coming back to Denver on 80 across Wyo. from Idaho. Snow started at Rawlins, by the time I got to Arlington I couldn't see the road any more. For the next 40 miles I drove weaving from one delineation pole to the other, if the storm had suddenly lifted you would have sworn I was drunk. Coming down so hard, I couldn't tell if anyone was behind me until I got almost to Laramie and looked back, probably 15 to 20 trucks behind me, no one tried to pass. 287 was closed SB to Ft. Collins, Sherman was closed because of a UPS jigsaw puzzle, spent 13 hrs in WalMarts parking lot.

 

The one where my dad looked out the kitchen window and said, Son, I'm not even gonna ask you to shovel this one.
I grew up in Minn

 

One time it snowed like a foot and a half in Portland, OR back in I think 2008, which caused a huge mess because that doesn't usually happen there. It stated coming down on Saturday AM after I'd been out drinkin' downtown the night before and stayed down there for the night. One of the few times (actually the only I think) where I had to abandon my car a couple blocks from my house because it honestly wouldn't make it with RWD and summer tires.

Knock on wood I've never had any serious disasters trucking. Lots of storms and dicey situations and I've gotten lucky a couple times. Confident but not ####y is the fine line to walk.

 

76' & 77' in Pittsburgh. We missed like 2 full weeks of school because it was so cold, they could not sufficiently heat the school, and they ran out of natural gas / heating oil because it had to go to homes. Of course we went outside and built igloos & snow forts and such. Extra two weeks vacation. I remember spending half a day shoveling ice to make a spot for my Dads car to park.

As a driver, 09'. All of it. Snow higher than the trailer on the US-2 and Vermont 103 in Vermont for like 100 miles. WTF white out blizzards around lake Erie in the Buckeye. The largest snow flakes I'd ever seen in Connecticut. And last but not least the -19 in Minnesota.

 

I have a most excellent picture on an old cell phone that is probably lost forever, it was when I stopped, the centrifugal force pushing water out from my hubs & lug nuts, I had perfect 8" icicles attached to every lug nut on my steers, and they went strait out perfectly symmetrical. Slightly chilly day.