Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011

The past 24 hours have been pretty incredible, thanks to the massive Groundhog Day Blizzard of '11 that passed through Milwaukee. Last night, I experienced things I had only read about in history books... high winds, snow that blew up instead of down, whiteout conditions and thunder snow. It was Nature in all of its power and glory. Destructive, yet beautiful. I could barely peel myself away from the window to get some sleep, and in the morning I awoke to bright sunshine and stark white.

Our backyard looked like it had whipped frosting poured over it an unevenly swirled about.
And yes, I just compared a blizzard to frosting. This is a food blog, folks.

The drift to the right of my car was about 5 feet high!

Even our covered front porch (1/2 level up from our driveway, and a full story up from the street) had drifts!

 It was quite a bit to take in. Zak and I were grateful that everyone we knew had spent the night at home and safe from the storm. I was pleased with our two kind neighbor men who came over to help Zak finally fix our snowblower, which he hadn't figured out how to get started since we purchased it in September. Today was definitely the day to get it operating!


Our dog Blue loved the snow, and Zak even brought out Rufus the cat to try it out.

Snow Cat?

He looks pretty hesitant...

Time to head back indoors. Brr!

The whole ordeal was pretty hilarious. Surprisingly, Rufus didn't mind going in the snow. Perhaps we'll try again tomorrow!


The killer icicles continue to grow and become more sinister-looking...

How's the weather where you live? Did you experience any bit of this crazy, region-wide storm? Have you experienced a "Storm of the Century" before? I am admittedly a history nerd, so I thought it was a pretty wild experience to have witnessed this blizzard!