Good morning, Netizens...

If you are smart little Netizens, you are probably still huddled up in bed beneath a wealth of covers and perhaps the family dog because it is cold outside this morning. My comments about the blizzard warnings yesterday may have been premature or at very least, somewhat inaccurate for areas outside Spokane's urban area.

I received an e-mail message from a farmer friend who lives by Odessa who tells me he has a five foot snow drift across the end of his lane and is in a whiteout condition. He would take his heavy-duty tractor and solve that problem, but since the school is closed today, nobody in the house has anywhere they really need to go. Besides, so long as the wind keeps blowing the snow drifts would simply reinstitute themselves as fast as he removes them. His solution was to make coffee, feed the livestock and watch the snow blowing sideways across his barn yard.

The overall word according to those that know is once you travel outside town, where there are no buildings or trees to slow or mediate the effect of the wind, snow drifts have become commonplace overnight. Roads are closed, some schools are closed or delayed and travel is ill-advised in most areas outside Spokane's inner core.

I wouldn't qualify this as a blizzard in some areas, but it certainly comes close.

As for Spokane, the main streets for the most part have been plowed in a disultory fashion, and in most cases that is about all you get. Hence once the morning commute actually gets started, we probably could see a version of the bumper car game that will keep our streets and freeways tied up for hours.

Once we recover from all this, tonight it will be frigid with temperatures slated to fall below zero, thus breaking temperature records.

Dave

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