Blizzard!

 Well, Oklahoma is having another record breaking (actually record setting...unprecedented) catastrophic weather event.

Right now, it's colder than it has ever been, and there will be approximately 20 inches of snow on the ground by Wednesday evening.

Tonight, and into tomorrow morning, there will be sub zero air temperatures, and the wind chill factors will reach thirty degrees below zero, fahrenheit.

This is Alaska, North Dakota, Wyoming winter weather.  This is not southern plains weather.

People are already dying.  Animals are dying.

We are fortunate that we have shelter and warmth. Those who do not are in imminent, life threatening danger.

SO there's that.

We started seeing this in the forecast on Wednesday, so we ordered our groceries Wednesday night.  

The service was already overwhelmed, and they couldn't give us a delivery time until Thursday morning.  Our shopper said the shelves were already getting sparse.

Luckily, we got everything we ordered, in one form or another.  I mean... I wanted bone in pork chops, and I GOT thin cut, boneless, flavored pork chops...but whatever.

By yesterday, people who hadn't had the forethought that we had were faced with bare shelves.

Folks who have places to live will be stuck in those places for at least a full week.  

Oklahoma city, county, and state services are not equipped or staffed adequately to clear the roads beyond the highways, and what they call "tier 1" snow routes.... that would be the grid of surface streets that mark out the one mile section lines.

Our street will never be plowed.  People will be driving down it, making ruts, and sliding into yards.

Yay.

I left all of my seriously cold weather gear back in Illinois when I moved.  I gave my sister my down parka, and I donated my boots, gloves, and hat.

I've ordered new ones, but they can't get to me with the blizzard.

When I go out to shovel the driveway later, I will be wearing Dave's parka, which he bought in 2011 when we had a really bad cold snap.   The coat I bought at that time turned out to be inadequate.  It has a great, warm hood, but the body of the coat is worthless.  You can't really tell that when you're indoors trying things on, LOL!

I've been using my hiking boots for snow, but they aren't well insulated enough to deal with this intense cold, so I will have to come inside often from shoveling.

Fortunately, it's so very cold (high of seven degrees during the snowfall), that the snow will be light and easy to move.

If our power stays on, we will be okay.  If it goes out, it will be very bad for us.  

I am baking brownies, and going out to do a little shoveling here in a few minutes.  Just trying to maintain sanity.

I walked away from my computer hours ago, and forgot to click "publish."  Oops!

Stay warm and safe, gentle readers!