Snowcalypse, 2011

Here is video footage of Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel reporting from Chicago last night, Tuesday 2-1-11.  Stephen had told me before about it snowing so hard here that it thundered and since then, I'd always wanted to hear it for myself.  Well, not only did I get to hear thundersnow last night, but I also got to see some snow lightening.  Evidently I've turned into a huge weather dork because the whole thing fascinated me!  

The one thing throughout all of this that scared me was the wind.  We had horrible winds (I believe they could be classified as hurricane winds) throughout all of Tuesday when the blizzard started into the early hours of Wednesday morning.  When I tell you that it was windy, that is the understatement of the year.  Our third floor apartment (which is located in a 4-story, walk-up) was shaking.  I went to bed on Tuesday night to my bed shaking.  I was so afraid that I would be awakened to us falling through the floor or the ceiling caving in on us.  The biggest problem with this wind is that it caused waves (15-20ft) on Lake Shore Drive making LSD nearly impossible to drive.  As a result, they closed the street and hundreds (I believe somewhere in the 400 mark) of cars were left abandoned (including city buses and plows) to stay the entire night and into the next day before they were towed off.    I ventured out on Wednesday and got some great pictures of the action:

Scenes from our street

 Would you like to take a seat on this bench in the park?

 People just walking down Fullterton, a usually busy and traffic-y street

 Right outside the zoo

 Lake Michigan

 Scenes from Lake Shore Drive - looks like something out of a movie!

Lake Shore Drive

Stephen went to the gym on Wednesday night and when he got home he was like a kid, so excited to tell me that WGN was filming on our street.  Below you'll find the video we took of the news report on our camera.  You'll also hear an excited Stephen saying, "that's our street!" and what sounds like an annoyed me with , "stop!".  Don't worry - I had a huge smile on my face when I said that because I was laughing at how excited he got.  Anytime the news reporter is standing in front of a side street with large amounts of snow and talking about how there is still so much snow to be plowed, he is standing in front of our street here in Chicago...WE'RE FAMOUS!!! :)

Remember all that wind I was complaining about earlier?  Well it did work out in our favor!  On Tuesday, when Stephen got home from work and before it got too bad outside, we moved our car to an open parking spot on the end of our street.  Something you should know about our street: it's a wind tunnel, especially at the end of the street where we happened to park.  Because it's so windy where we parked our car, the snow couldn't fall to the ground in time to accumulate before the wind blew it off.  As a result, our car looks like it barely snowed.  SCORE FOR US!

I can honestly say that I'm so happy that I was living in Chicago during this crazy storm - what an experience!  And it even brought my friend, Amy, TWO snow days!  You should check out Amy's blog to see some of her cool pics of the blizzard.  She's got a swanky camera and a good eye, causing some great pictures!

If you're interested in reading more about it, click here to read what the local news has to say about it!