Reading the posts for this storm reminded me of my first encounter with snow.
I'm from Australia and living there again now but in 1995,96,97 I lived and worked in the US for an Australian software company.
I was based in Fairport, on the outskirts of Rochester in upstate NY.
I travelled a lot, over the period I was there I missed going to 4 states not counting Alaska or Hawaii.
Whenever I had to fly anywhere I would leave my car in the long term car park and get the shuttle bus to the airport.
I got to know most of the shuttle bus drivers and they remembered me due to the Aussie accent.
I flew back into Rochester about midnight after a blizzard had come through. There was no snow at all when I left 2 weeks before.
I was looking out the window coming back into Rochester, thinking how beautiful and white and clean it all looked.
I got sorted with luggage etc and got picked up by the shuttle bus driver. At this time of night I was the only one on the bus, so we started chatting. I was asking him how much snow there was, no idea of the exact amount now, but it was piled really high on the side of the road. I saw my first real snow plough roaring along the road in front of us spewing snow off the road and onto the side of the road, totally burying any cars there. I asked the driver what people do with their cars in the morning. He said they either dig them out or leave them till it melts.
So we get to the long term car park, which is really a fenced lot with no cover.
I gave him my parking ticket that showed the bay my car was in.
He chuckled a bit and stopped at the office and got me a snow shovel, which I had never seen before. Growing up on a farm I had used a grain shovel many times, it looked similar, light, wide, short handle.
Trying to park my car where it would not get damaged, I had it in the back row of the lot. The snow plough had been doing many runs through the lot and my car was still sitting where the snow plough had been dumping lots of snow. When we got to where my car should be there was a snow pile ? a drift ? a wall?, whatever you call it, about 8 feet tall. The pile of snow was right along the length of the row.
He said that he thought my car should be about "there" but I'd have to uncover the paint indicating the bay numbers to be sure.
So I spent the next two or three hours shoveling snow for my first time at 1am in the crisp night air after a blizzard.
The shuttle bus driver came back a few times to check on me and gave me a cup of coffee while I sat in his bus, with a heater.
I eventually uncovered the bay numbers and found my car and dug enough to see the back of it and get to the drivers door.
Luckily it started and was able to back out of the bay.
I got home to bed about 4am, tired, cold and wet.
Not a big fan of snow now.
