About 5" of fresh snow this morning. 25 mph sustained wind out of the north. 27F degrees.
For some reason they decided to call off school today for the first time this winter. This is curious because we've had more snow, higher winds and much, much colder temps this winter and school was still left in session. Not sure what changed. My son was surprisingly upset about there not being school today because he was supposed to go compete in a jazz band contest. Had the snow happened tomorrow instead he would have been delighted.
School was closed, but all businesses were still in operation so no snow day for me. I got up an hour early because I wanted to blow the snow off the driveway before my wife drove the car over it and turned it into a rutted frozen mess, and because I knew the ride to work would likely be slower than normal because of the weather.
I knew the MUP would be in rough shape this morning and that the plows wouldn't yet have gotten the side streets cleared. I opted to take the "emergency snow routes." These are the main artery streets that the city makes sure to keep plowed so that emergency vehicles can get through. This meant I would probably also be dealing with more traffic than normal. I hoped that between leaving early and the school cancellation that traffic wouldn't be too bad. This route to work is also a bit longer and has more hills.
Thankfully traffic wasn't bad at all. I had one goofball close pass me, seemingly intentionally to "teach those cyclists a lesson." All other cars were more than gracious slowing down and giving me plenty of room. I returned the favor by pulling over in tighter spots to let the cars go by so I wouldn't be holding things up. Between the hills, headwind and the snow I was moving a lot slower than my normal slow self.
I left the house 45 minutes earlier than normal thinking it would take me at least an hour to get to work. This gave me a total of 1:15 to make it the 4.5 miles to downtown. It only took me about 40 minutes. So I wound up getting to the office quite early. Now I get to see how many other people won't come in today because the conditions are too bad outside.
