Heh. About 15 years ago, when I was attending college in
Sault Saint Marie, MI (LSSU's campus sits on a hill right where I-75 becomes the International Bridge), we got what must have been close to 6 FEET of
snow in one 24-hr blizzard. On the windward side of the dorms, people were walking in and out the 2nd-story windows on snowshoes. On the leeward side of the dorm, after the snowblowers came through and cut a path, the remaining snow (no piling effect, the
'blowers were throwing it 50-100ft) was above my eyeball level, and I stand 6'1". The National Guard got called up from Detroit to assist in the digging-out efforts. And a month later, when I went home for
Thanksgiving, almost every bulldozer, dump truck, backhoe, and other piece of earth-moving gear in the county were still in play digging the city out (granted, we had more snow after that, but nothing like the Big One).
The good news was, this snow (as is typical for the area) was about as dense as shaving cream -- I had to shovel enough snow to fill a small dump truck
(twice!) to un-bury my car (not even a bump in the snow to indicate where it was, I had to work purely off of memory), and didn't exhaust myself (I'm a
couch spud, I'll admit it). Even so, roofs collapsed all over the city, including the big food court skylight in the mall on the Canadian side.
To be fair, the conditions were a bit unique: SSM sits essentially on the very Eastern tip of Lake Superior, and this storm rolled right down the length of the
lake, picking up moisture as it came. Then to add insult to injury, LSSU sits atop a big pimple of a hill just a few hundred feet inland from the beach, so
the wind had a double-whammy triggering it to dump its load Right There.
SSM was fun, though. After the first major snowfall of the season, you generally drove on the layer of ice atop the pavement for the next few months -- you
wouldn't actually see asphalt until almost March on some streets. And most of the shops downtown had special "snowmobile parking" spots -- there
were people in the surrounding countryside who were effectively snowed in for wheeled vehicles for weeks at a time as a regular thing. One of the Professors
actually skied in the 3-4miles to the office every day with his dog (they apparently moonlighted as an S&R team at
the ski slopes).
Sault Saint Marie, MI (LSSU's campus sits on a hill right where I-75 becomes the International Bridge), we got what must have been close to 6 FEET of
snow in one 24-hr blizzard. On the windward side of the dorms, people were walking in and out the 2nd-story windows on snowshoes. On the leeward side of the dorm, after the snowblowers came through and cut a path, the remaining snow (no piling effect, the
'blowers were throwing it 50-100ft) was above my eyeball level, and I stand 6'1". The National Guard got called up from Detroit to assist in the digging-out efforts. And a month later, when I went home for
Thanksgiving, almost every bulldozer, dump truck, backhoe, and other piece of earth-moving gear in the county were still in play digging the city out (granted, we had more snow after that, but nothing like the Big One).
The good news was, this snow (as is typical for the area) was about as dense as shaving cream -- I had to shovel enough snow to fill a small dump truck
(twice!) to un-bury my car (not even a bump in the snow to indicate where it was, I had to work purely off of memory), and didn't exhaust myself (I'm a
couch spud, I'll admit it). Even so, roofs collapsed all over the city, including the big food court skylight in the mall on the Canadian side.
To be fair, the conditions were a bit unique: SSM sits essentially on the very Eastern tip of Lake Superior, and this storm rolled right down the length of the
lake, picking up moisture as it came. Then to add insult to injury, LSSU sits atop a big pimple of a hill just a few hundred feet inland from the beach, so
the wind had a double-whammy triggering it to dump its load Right There.
SSM was fun, though. After the first major snowfall of the season, you generally drove on the layer of ice atop the pavement for the next few months -- you
wouldn't actually see asphalt until almost March on some streets. And most of the shops downtown had special "snowmobile parking" spots -- there
were people in the surrounding countryside who were effectively snowed in for wheeled vehicles for weeks at a time as a regular thing. One of the Professors
actually skied in the 3-4miles to the office every day with his dog (they apparently moonlighted as an S&R team at
the ski slopes).