Winter Finally Shows Up

I was loving the weather this year, in some ways. Mostly, in the "lower heating bills" kind of way. It has made me a little nervous about what the summer will bring, but for the most part, I've been fairly happy with how the season was progressing. Low key, not much going on.

Until now.
First, they predicted scattered flurries.
Then it was 2-4 inches.
Or 4-8 inches.
Make that 8-12 inches. Wind warnings.
Or maybe it will only be 8 inches.
Or a total of 6-10.
Or could it possibly be that they have NO IDEA?

I'm going with that.

It has been snowing for a couple of days now. Not a lot at one time, for the most part. Yesterday, it did something I haven't seen before. Started the day with crappy roads, then it cleared up. Got bad again, then it stopped for a while and the roads were cleared. Then, yet again, snow covered the roads... and was cleared off. I have never seen that happen so many times in one day, going from really crappy, to just fine, and back again, several times over.

It made it very difficult for people to plan their days, or to know whether the roads would be safe to drive on. They might be fine on the way somewhere, and nearly impassable on the way home.

We had three calls within 16 hours.
Not a lot compared to some places, but a lot for us.
Three completely different situations. I think all the patients will end up doing well, but if I had to guess, I'd guess they may not all be home today. We have some chance of hearing about two of them, being local, but probably won't know much about the third, who was just passing through.

I was fairly pleased with how the calls went. Both in how well we functioned, and in the outcome.

We were the lucky ones for the day.
Several fatalities within a short distance from here in the past week or so. One, we listened in on the scanner last night, and I believe there was another one nearby just a couple of hours ago.
When they shut down the state highways for several hours, that's a great big clue.

The snow is supposed to stop soon. I don't begrudge the winter its share of white fluffy stuff, but I have a totally different relationship with snow now than I did before joining the fire department. It often brings us more work, and some of that is not kind to some of the people out there.

Be careful. Learn to drive in snow, if it happens where you are. Take your time- or stay home. Seriously, people. Wear your seatbelts, don't drive faster than the road conditions allow, and hit the deer.