A while back I had the sombre duty of reporting on #WUHAN#SNOWPOCALYPSE 2024!¹ Little did I know that I would be needing to rename it to WUHAN SNOWPOCALYPSE 2024(A) because yesterday and today has given us WUHAN SNOWPOCALYPSE 2024(B)!
Unlike the first snowpocalypse, which happened in the middle of a national holiday and was thus something more suited to the kind of "we're all in this together" vibe that made surviving it easier, this snowpocalypse was far less a social event and far more an abject disaster.²
Further, the nature of the #snow was radically different. Those experienced in how snow usually works will note strangeness in this #snowfall, like it wasn't actually snow at all. Those who experienced it will also note that the snow merely falling (as in not whipped up by wind) onto bare flesh actually stung a little bit, like someone dropping sewing needles on your outstretched hand from a 2m height. And, too, how often can you hear snowfall. Through closed windows.
To say this was unusual snowfall is to put it mildly.
Most places actually closed their doors yesterday because the snow was so overwhelming. It was difficult to walk and harder to drive and every attempt to clean it up was met with cleared roads and sidewalks being covered within minutes with snow that felt more like sand at the beach underfoot.
More details can be found in the alt text, as usual.
The horror of SNOWPOCALYPSE began with an ice storm on 2024-02-03. In the late morning the ice buildup had led to several very large boughs on nearby trees breaking and plummeting to earth. A short respite of melting was overcome by a second round of ice buildup in the afternoon, but by then all the boughs that were going to break had broken.
Until the snowfall started that evening.
The pictures here show the horrifying outcome! Details in alt text.
The next winter storm approaches Portland in roughly 1 hour.
I'm not entirely prepared after having 3 days of no power but I'm hoping that this one won't be quite as intense on our power grid as the last one. 🤞 #pdx#portland#snowpocalypse
Fire uptime > 48 hours, but if we don't have power by tomorrow morning, we're gonna evacuate before the freezing rain hits. #fire#snowpocalypse#pdxtst#pdx#portland
Over 2' of snow overnight! Power is still out after 13 hours. I kept the woodstove loaded all night and it was 82⁰ in the living room when we got up.
Now if I can just make it to the beast snowblower 😱. #Alaska#Anchorage#BearValley#WinterStorm#Snowpocalypse#Snow#Winter