Well, it was a storm of decent size. Respectable snow and snow and snow followed by miserable freezing rain (which brought down a chunk of the tree in our backyard, though tree limbs are down all over the city) followed by rain and rain and rain. We didn't lose our power, though many did. Most of the city (including our neighbourhood) has buried electrical wires, and that helps a lot. This is the worst combination for a pedestrian city. The snow covers the sewers and creates dams, then it warms up a little and it starts to be freezing rain instead of snow, so then the city puts down salt to melt the ice, plus the snow starts to melt (helped by the salt) and then it changes to rain and then...
Slushflood. Not terrible, horrible flooding, but urban flooding that covers every single sidewalk in the city with inches of an icy slurry of slush and water, making getting around really rough. (If there is anyone in the city who has found a way to keep their feet both warm AND dry in this (insert expletive of your choice here), I would be interested in hearing it. All of my winter boots can't cope with the water, and all of my spring boots (that can handle the water) aren't warm enough for the slurry of ice.
My neighbour is seen here going up and down the street trying hard (as are many Torontonians) to find the street sewer under the snow and ice and open it so the water can drain before it freezes.
We tried for a good long time. We failed. I shovelled water for long enough to figure out that it was a losing game unless my neighbour could open the sewer, and he couldn't even find the sewer. All the neighbours out on their porches giving advice, some walking up and down, all with different techniques. Some were listening, some had long sticks for testing the road at intervals and some were convinced that they could remember where it was. (They were wrong.) Someone in this neighbourhood has got to put a damned flag on it in July or something. This happens every winter. I'd call the city and ask them, but in the wake of a storm like that they have bigger fish to fry than our wet sidewalk. Thwarted, I knit on the Bohus instead.
It was considerably uplifting. Sort of like my own little sunshine farm. I think I'm almost done the first sleeve. ( I thought I was before, but when I tried it on I was totally deluded. By a lot. Hope is an incredible thing. )
The kids are home today, two of them had a scheduled day off and Sam stayed put because, well....she's a pedestrian. We're supposed to get more snow later this afternoon and evening as the temperature drops....and that should be even less entertaining for all parties who failed to find their sewer as that 8 cm /3 inches of water freezes into a spectacular city wide skating rink. (Sam admits that she thinks this will be very, very fun. I have a terrible sense of balance and am less sure.)
In the interest of producing cheerfulness in the face of the two outside things I hate the most (cold and wet) I am going to bake cookies and eat as much of the batch as it takes to replace lunch and possibly dinner and consider how very, very happy I am that the basement is not currently leaking. Optimism is everything.
(How much longer 'til spring?)
Added later: Apologies for if your comment from earlier is missing. The server (which I loathe with the white hot fury of a thousand suns) is having some sort of seizure - again.
We hates it.