We're doomed

Yes, we have a major winter storm coming. And, if the forecasts all pan out, we are talking about a Storm of the Century. Which is correct since this will indeed be the biggest storm of the 21st century. So, it's not an exaggeration, or a lie, to say that.

Obviously the news has been all over this, the supermarkets are super busy and even Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel is here. So, obviously that means we will get an inch of snow and we'll all be disappointed.

I'm kidding of course. Nobody is backing down from this thing. I've heard that DFW in Dallas is already shut down due to ice and snow and it is all heading this way as the storm intensifies. The good thing is I'm off of work anyway so I don't have to worry about getting there in the morning. They are setting up hotel rooms for people so they don't have to drive home, but I wouldn't take it anyway. I live too close and my mom's house is even closer so I could always stay there if needed. Actually, I did that exact thing on the storm of last century when we received 21 inches of snow.

What are we going to get today? Well, it varies. Here are a couple of charts I pulled up.

In the second one I live within the band that says 18 inches. But that doesn't mean that's all I'll get. It could be more, could be a little less. The forecasts all say at least a foot, which wouldn't be terrible, to two feet, which wouldn't be so good. The worst part, for those going to work, is that this is going to be at it's worst over that late night/early morning hours and the National Weather Service is saying that it may snow so hard at times that the plows won't be able to keep up and road may become impassable. On the first chart it shows that it could snow as much as three inches an hour at time. I'm going to need to get up in the middle of the night to clear the driveway off about three times to keep up.

No matter what we get, we are set in our house. We have food. Jenn can work from home and the dogs will keep us warm. I just hope we don't lose power. We have a fireplace, but it is a wood burning one and we have no firewood and we have never had the chimney cleaned since we moved in 8 years ago. I don't want to die.

I'm planning on putting a ruler out somewhere to measure the snow because I'm a big dork. Hopefully I'll be back let you know how it went.

Oh, and here is a YouTube video from the Chicago office of the National Weather Service. You can see what we are going to get and learn a little bit about classic mid-latitude cyclone formation and what a baroclinic leaf is. There will be a test later.