(The opening paragraph with all the meteorological details is for my dad because… well, because he’d be extremely disappointed if I didn’t. Of course, mom, you’ll have to print this off and hand it to him.)

It’s official! The National Weather service measured an even nineteen inches of snow at the airport today, falling just three-tenths of an inch shy of the all-time record for snow in Amarillo during a 24-hour period which was set way back in 1934. While achieving close-but-no-cigar status on that all-time mark, today’s snow dump did set a couple of other records worth noting. It breaks the all-time February 25th record of ten inches and the all-time record for any day in February, twelve inches set back in 1893. If you want some real perspective on the grand scale of all this, consider that the Donut Stop was closed today. First time in nearly forty years. So, yeah, this doesn’t happen all the time up here. Not even close. What we’re enjoying here is downright rare and even historic.

The snow stopped at about 2:00 this afternoon and the winds died down from the 50-55 mph range (a top gust of 75 mph was observed at the airport! That’s for you, too, dad.) to about 15-20 mph and the clouds actually cleared out enough for the sun to shine through for a couple of hours. Carley and I did venture back out in the mess to do a little more exploring and tackle a couple of building projects while the other three girls in the house drank hot chocolate and watched “Lord of the Rings.” (Help me.)

Carley and I buried each other in the snow, made snow angels with disproportionately small heads in the four-foot drifts in the alley, shoveled the front walk and half of the back drive, surveyed wind damage at a couple of spots in our fence, visited with neighbor Joe and his precious little girl as they cleared their driveway, and talked for a while with neighbor Warner and his little dog, Charlie, as they braved the elements for a much needed walk. As for the building projects, we attempted to dig a long tunnel under the massive drifts in front of the house (failed), build a snowman (failed), build a snow flamingo with a super long neck (failed), and construct a very sophisticated igloo / fort (jury’s still out on the fort; it got dark before we finished). Valerie did venture out once this afternoon to collect enough snow to make some delicious snow ice cream. It was treacherous for her as Carley and I bombed her with snowballs as she scrambled back to the door. The ice cream is excellent!

I’ve spent a good deal of the in-between time today reading a new book, Lombardi and Landry. It’s written by Ernie Palladino, a long time beat writer for the New York Giants back in the 50s with the Journal News. The whole book tracks the beginnings of the Hall of Fame careers of Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi, when they both worked together on the Giants’ staff of head coach Jim Lee Howell. Can you imagine that? Lombardi running the offense and Landry in charge of the defense. It was said at the time that Howell was just in charge of blowing up the footballs during those championship years. It’s a fairly decent read so far, all of it written from the Giants’ perspective and, in my view, a little Lombardi heavy. I was surprised to read Palladino giving Landry credit for suggesting the Giants move Kyle Rote from halfback to flanker and changing Sam Huff from an offensive lineman to the first true middle linebacker in football history. Of course, the rest is history with those two legendary players. But I’ve never heard Landry credited with those obviously important decisions. I read Huff’s autobiography a couple of years ago, and I don’t remember reading anything about that. Anyway, it’s an OK book. I’m almost halfway through it. I’m up to the 1956 championship season, Frank Gifford’s breakout year.

School has already been cancelled for tomorrow. Again. It’s supposed to get down to nine-degrees tonight with wind chills below zero. So, no alarm clocks! Maybe we’ll finish the fort tomorrow. Maybe it’ll be OK after lunch to try to get out on the road, see a movie or something. Maybe I’ll just throw another few logs on the fireplace and keep reading.

Peace,

Allan

It’s almost noon Monday, there are thirteen-plus inches of snow on the ground, 36-plus-inch drifts here and there around our house, and it’s still coming! Sideways! It’s supposed to keep snowing until maybe 5:00 or 6:00 this evening, and the winds are still supposed to be blowing at a sustained 40-45 miles per hour with gusts of 50-55 miles per hour until Tuesday night. The National Weather Service “Blizzard Warning” remains in effect for all of Amarillo until 3:00 tomorrow morning. And we are stuck. I mean stuck big time. We’re not going anywhere today and maybe not even tomorrow.

It’s so cool!

We knew something was happening. They had issued the Blizzard Warning late Saturday afternoon. But when we walked out of Ruby T’s after church at 1:00 yesterday, the skies were clear, the sun was shining, winds were calm, and it was 65-degrees. Carrie-Anne and Valerie went to the store to grab a few things for small group and came home reporting long lines, huge crowds, empty shelves, and near chaos of apocalyptic proportions. It was like Russia near the end of the Cold War. The front hit about an hour later and it snowed a little bit between 6:00 and 7:00. But when we left the Bentleys’ house at about 8:00 it was all gone. No snow.

Until 10:00. That’s when it really started pouring. And it hasn’t let up since.

We had just settled in to watch the news and Carrie-Anne spotted it first. I wasn’t really looking for it, I wasn’t expecting it. But she saw it on the little crawl at the bottom of the TV screen. “Did that say Amarillo ISD?” I rewound the beginning of the local news a couple of clicks on the back button (Thank you, DVR!) and oh, my word, there it was! Amarillo ISD classes canceled along with almost every other school district in the tri-state area.

Those of you reading this post from outside the panhandle don’t fully appreciate the magnitude of this development. I really didn’t, either, until I had exchanged a few texts with Kim, a local principal here and a great friend of ours from Central. Yes, we’re in the middle of only our second winter up here, and, yes, we’ve only experienced a couple of bad snows. But school has not been canceled one time for weather. Not for a seven-inch snow last year and not for a three or four inch snow two weeks ago. According to Kim, this is only the second time in the past forty years (!!!) that Amarillo ISD has cancelled classes for snow the night before the actual event. Whoa.

After Doppler Dave and Prowlin’ Allan and all the other local weather men assured us that, yeah, this one’s going to be for real, I made the decision to head back up to the church building and get all my stuff for Wednesday night’s class and next Sunday’s class and sermon. Just in case. I had about a half mile visibility to and from the church building. And I was the only one on I-40. I didn’t see any other vehicles the whole way there and back. By the time I got home at 11:00, it was on. For real.

We stayed up another hour or so watching the snow pour down. We went to sleep with the consistent howl of the north winds as a background track and woke up this morning to snow like I’ve never seen in my life. Three and four foot drifts and snow blowing so hard I couldn’t see our back fence from the back door. The snow plows weren’t even running because of zero visibility. This is a real-deal blizzard! All the highways are completely closed: I-40 in and out of Amarillo is shut down; I-27 between Amarillo and Lubbock is closed both ways; 287 is also closed both ways. There’s no getting in or out. Some of the drifting in the middle of our alley and down Roxton is 24-inches deep. I couldn’t get anywhere in this if I wanted to.

And… I kind of want to.

Carley and I were the only ones to brave the outdoors this morning. The other three women in the house are enjoying the blizzard wrapped up in blankets on the couches watching “Fried Green Tomatoes.” Wimps. So my youngest daughter and I bundled up and explored the property, plowing through almost waist high drifts, marveling at the cool snow sculptures shaped by the wind around our eaves and fences, and taking a lot of measurements and pictures.

We’re going to do a little more of that later today, maybe after lunch. There’s a big pot of chicken and dumplings on the stove and, once we’re sufficiently warmed back up, Carley and I will get back outside.

All my appointments and meetings have been canceled for today and tomorrow and we really are stuck here at the house. I can’t imagine that anything will happen until Wednesday or Thursday. It really is a mess out there. My sister, Rhonda, told me this morning that I’d better watch it or I’ll start feeling like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.” So, you might pay attention to my blog. If I write, “All work and no play makes Allan a dull boy” over and over again, call somebody.

Peace,

Allan