Well, It's been a good run but sadly all good things must come to an end. Alas we are apparently being "lashed by a major blizzard" and are experiencing a "storm of historic proportions" that will no doubt be recalled in the future as an "epic snowfall." With unending descriptive statements such as these I can only conclude that the world will surely end for those of us in the Northeast.

As further proof of the impending Armageddon one only has to stroll through the local grocery store where throngs of wild-eyed shoppers are stocking up on essentials such as TV dinners, bags of salty snacks and frozen pizzas. I truly felt the fool standing in line with only a clove of garlic, 4 jalapenos, a bunch of fresh cilantro, and an image of fresh chili in my mind.

Mark, I truly appreciate your brave face proclaiming your love of a good snowstorm in spite of being directly in the "maw of the beast" with your residence being east of I-495. I can only presume you won't make it past midnight.

Yikes! I have lived in New England most of my life...I've survived untold snowstorms including the famed "blizzard of '78" but I can't ever remember this much hype for a storm. It seems every media venue is trying to deliver the most dire prediction possible and most of the public is buying it. My quotes above are actual statements by the talking heads on television. Personally, I'm making chili...lots of it because I have to work tomorrow and I'll have 8 guys instead of 4 on duty. Tonight I'm gonna shovel and really early tomorrow I'll use the backhoe to clear everything before leaving for work. If it's really bad in the morning I may put the chains on my truck so I can get to work. Heck, by Sunday night this storm will be just a bunch of snow piles on the side of the road.

Sorry about the rant...Mark, can I send you some chili?



Oops...photo added for top of page. Westover Air Show this past summer.

ELinder wrote:
At 500mm and 1/1600 sec I'm blaming the lack of sharpness on the atmospherics that produced the nice puffy vortex and not my panning technique

Erich


Nothing wrong with your panning technique for a 500mm lens.

Well done, a different crop than we normally see here.

Thanks for posting.

KZinnack wrote:
Mark, can I send you some chili?

I'd settle for an image of chili... Haven't had killer chili in ages. <insert stomach rumble here>

Rodolfo Paiz wrote:
KZinnack wrote:
Mark, can I send you some chili?

I'd settle for an image of chili... Haven't had killer chili in ages. <insert stomach rumble here>

No problem Rodolfo...consider it on the way.

Your description of all of the people buying "necessities" in order to survive the blizzard makes me think that most people in the south moved to the northeast in order to show northerners how to panic.

Reminds me of my years in Virginia, when 2-3 inches of snow would shut the place down...

2-3mm would shut Austin down

C'mon; a heavy rainstorm shuts Austin down....

lol ok, true Jo, but I wasn't gonna make Austin sound THAT bad Here's my pup during the Austin blizzard of 2011 that lasted a full 4 hours!

KZinnack wrote:

Mark, I truly appreciate your brave face proclaiming your love of a good snowstorm in spite of being directly in the "maw of the beast" with your residence being east of I-495. I can only presume you won't make it past midnight.

Sorry about the rant...Mark, can I send you some chili?



No problem, Karl. Since my family and I only have about 4 hours left to live, a last meal of what sounds like some fine chili would be more than welcome.

All kidding aside, the winds are really starting to howl. If we lose power it will be very cold and miserable pretty quickly. Otherwise, I expect tomorrow morning to look a lot like this January 2005 storm, except I don't have Kelsey to play with anymore.

The wind really sculpts the snow around the cars, with bare pavement on one side and a 4 or 5 foot drift on the other.






We'll be fine. Looking to catch up on a bunch of Photoshop work tonight.

Mark

I need to go find the negs from the great Tucson Blizzard of '86.

Ever see a Saguaro with 6" of snow on it?

ELinder wrote:
At 500mm and 1/1600 sec I'm blaming the lack of sharpness on the atmospherics that produced the nice puffy vortex and not my panning technique

Erich


What a shot Erich, ++++++++++1

It supposed to be winter here in Bahrain, but still the temp is 20+ C (68+ F) and no rain even

msalvetti wrote:
KZinnack wrote:

Mark, I truly appreciate your brave face proclaiming your love of a good snowstorm in spite of being directly in the "maw of the beast" with your residence being east of I-495. I can only presume you won't make it past midnight.

Sorry about the rant...Mark, can I send you some chili?



No problem, Karl. Since my family and I only have about 4 hours left to live, a last meal of what sounds like some fine chili would be more than welcome.

All kidding aside, the winds are really starting to howl. If we lose power it will be very cold and miserable pretty quickly. Otherwise, I expect tomorrow morning to look a lot like this January 2005 storm, except I don't have Kelsey to play with anymore.

The wind really sculpts the snow around the cars, with bare pavement on one side and a 4 or 5 foot drift on the other.






We'll be fine. Looking to catch up on a bunch of Photoshop work tonight.

Mark

Thanks for the photo comments.

My brother was in Boston in '78 for the big snowstorm. I remember him telling they had great fun jumping from overpasses into the snow drifts and having to dig their way back up. Now THAT'S snow! I can't imagine what hyperbole today's news would put on during that storm.

Erich

Gosh, I'm starting to realize just how lucky I was to survive the Blizzard of 2011 in Kenosha. But after all, it was only 24 inches, not that 30 something they are predicting now!

Dan

, brings to mind what Route 128 looked like in 1978. Luckily now, they won't have that problem.

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/specials/gallery/blizzard_78_then_now/ is a good look back at the fun then. Hope all your tech gear is fully charged, but that you don't lose your power.

msalvetti wrote:
My brother gave me a copy of the current Equestrian Quarterly - I have it here in my office. He probably knows your CEO, that's the world he works in. I agree, these places are unbelievable. Stables that look like the Ritz. He has clients that will drop millions of dollars on a horse (primarily the jumpers).

My brother does equine massage for many world-class riders. He spends the winter with his clients in Wellington, Florida.
http://www.salmassage.com/

Meanwhile, his Miata is sitting in my driveway, and I'm hoping before this blizzard is over I'll be sending him a photo of the car buried at least to the roof in snow.

Mark

ELinder wrote:
Thanks for the photo comments.

My brother was in Boston in '78 for the big snowstorm. I remember him telling they had great fun jumping from overpasses into the snow drifts and having to dig their way back up. Now THAT'S snow! I can't imagine what hyperbole today's news would put on during that storm.

Erich

I was at my grandparents house in Dedham, Ma (suburb of Boston) for the blizzard of '78. My grandfather got stuck at work for a couple days so I had to dig out for my grandmother at the house. I think it took me 4 days to shovel out their AMC Hornet wagon (yes, it was green). I'm pretty sure we ended up with 2 weeks of February vacation that year.

NightOwl Cat wrote:
, brings to mind what Route 128 looked like in 1978. Luckily now, they won't have that problem.

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/specials/gallery/blizzard_78_then_now/ is a good look back at the fun then. Hope all your tech gear is fully charged, but that you don't lose your power.

Laura,

You had already graduated Medford High by then, but I was a junior. Between a week+ off due to the storm, the failure of an underground power line up the hill to the high school, and February school vacation, we must have had about 4 consecutive weeks off from school.

Mark

Winter .. I'm originally from ND ..

After the death of my father when I was 13, my uncle ( bachelor at the time ) moved my mom and us kids to The Farm as we weren't gonna run the streets of Rugby, ND ( population 2800 Anyway as we grew up, we had yearlings in the barn and a milk cow so we had our chores morning and night .. and when it was cold ...... like 20 below he'd stand at the kitchen window with a cup of coffee watching us walk down and back to the house from the barn - down the hill / city block.

Good ole days for sure !! We never thought a thing of it .. we had coveralls, snow mobile boots, leather mittens and hats with ear muffs !! Just another day and we'd shed our boots / outter clothes in the entry way and put on our school jackets and watch out another kitchen window thru the leafless shelterbelt so we could see that big yellow bus 3/4 of a mile away coming down the main county road towards our place.

We had a coal fired furnace .. I can't remember a time that we ever lost electricity though. Now I'm in MD on natural gas with a 8K emergency generator hooked to Natural Gas sitting outside ready to pop off in 15 seconds - and we haven't lost electricity all year ..... lol

edit .. we weren't allowed on the bus unless we were dressed for winter weather .. ( it's amazing how FAST and COLD a school bus gets when the heat goes off .. and I seem to remember each family had to have a sleeping bag in a bag that we kept behind the back seats ...

Leaked SI Swimsuit cover ......

HOLY ................. cow !

http://omg.yahoo.com/blogs/celeb-news/kate-upton-sheds-bikini-top-second-sports-illustrated-232730990.html