The BIG snow

Since it still feels like winter around here (with sleet and freezing rain yesterday), it seems fitting to post about our huge (huge for Charlotte that is) snowstorm several weeks ago.

The news had been predicting at least 6 inches for us over the course of two days (Feb 12th and 13th) but anyone around here will tell you they can tend to overreact and overestimate the change of snow. Nevertheless, my work sent an email telling us to work from home on Wednesday if we could. There had been a few flurries I saw swirling about from my cube on the 30th floor the previous evening but it was rain on the ground level. When I woke up Wednesday I expected to see snow on the ground... well there was nothing. I remember thinking there is no way we will get 6 inches if there is nothing now. Then about 10am it starting coming down and continued the whole day.

After I finished working Wednesday I went outside to get a few shots while the snowing had paused for a bit.

The crazy thing is it continued to snow through the night and the next day (they once again told us to work from home). It was the hardest snowfall I'd ever seen. Granted I haven't spent time up north growing up in FL but I've been on a few West Virginia ski trips and a NC mountains ski trip where it has snowed but never snowfall like this was. Around 2pm it stopped snowing and the sun came out so Eric and I ventured outside. We had at least 8 inches of snow... 9 inches probably in some places! Wow! Usually the most we ever get in Charlotte is 2-3 inches.

Thank goodness I have these super fab velcro snow shoes/boots from high school (for a couple of those ski trips I mentioned). Looks like I'm about to hop in my Delorean and head back to the future!

All the kids in our neighborhood were having a great time. This was the perfect snow for sledding, snowball fights and making snow angels. I tried to talk Eric into making snow angels but was unsuccessful.

Clearly tigers love the snow.

Temps at this point were above freezing so the snow was starting to very slowly melt but things were icy too. We decided to make a quick Walmart run with Justin who had been working up here/staying with us through the storm. Let's just say we had quite the interesting time getting out of our neighborhood on the snowy/icy roads even in his monster vehicle.

We saw that Walmart was closed (you know its a big snow when Walmart closes) as well as any other businesses/restaurants we had passed (McDonalds, Chickfila, etc.) but our favorite pizza place, Tony's, was luckily open and probably doing quite well for being the only place open. At 4:30 it was pretty busy. So we grabbed a pizza for dinner later and made the drive back to the house. Since a few others must have ventured out too, the neighborhood roads were a little easier to navigate.

Of course it got below freezing again that night and everything that was beginning to melt iced over so I worked from home again. They did a great job plowing the main roads so we had no issues making a trip to Columbia the next day to see Eric's family. Wouldn't want to miss making cupcakes with this adorable girl, now would I? Blue icing and all.

Even though temps continued to climb (even up to 60 degrees one day) and the snow was slowly melting, I could still see snow a week later... that's how much snow there was! I'm sure any of you who live like this all winter or see snow all of the time don't find this exciting but we thoroughly enjoyed our beautiful wintry wonderland. Although we were really ready to get back into the office the Monday after!