Snow snow snow!

Toronto, and many areas, were hit with a major storm today! We were only supposed to get about 5cm of snow with the possibility of freezing rain. Well, something funny happened on the way to the forum...

We got at least 10-15cm (between 1/3 and 1/2 foot) of snow, and the freezing rain is falling on top of that. I know, it doesn't sound THAT bad, compared to what other places have been getting, but this is the first major storm of the season. I remember when we'd get completely hammered with snow when I was younger. You know, where you'd wake up in the morning and the snow would be up to your knees (if you were lucky, it would only be your knees)...or little kids would go out and play in the snow drifts and all you would see is the pompom of their hats sticking out of the snow. I *miss* that kind of snow.

The only part I don't like is how long it takes to get anywhere in it.

We went to pick my mom up from the subway station after work. I told Josh to leave early, I figured that if he did, it wouldn't take us terribly long to get to the station. Well, I was, umm wrong.

It took over an hour and a half to drive 5km. The only way to get to the station was to go down a big hill. Cars were swerving and fish-tailing all over the road and one car came close to fish-tailing right into us. There were cars broken down all over the place, and it didn't help matters that we're right in the middle of a gas shortage.

(Long story short, there was a fire at a gas refinery and the majority of Esso stations ran out of gas this week...and then the other stations that were trying to make up for the shortage ran out themselves.)

I felt sorry for people who were stuck on the road in this storm.

The traffic was going so slowly that people were getting out of their cars and cleaning off their windshields. Trust me, they had the time to do that...the traffic simply didn't move.

We finally got to my mom, picked her up and she took us out for dinner. We were basically just waiting for the majority of the storm to pass before we got back on the road again, which was probably the smart thing to do. After dinner, we dropped mom at home and that's when the freezing rain started...

It wasn't too bad, we took the side streets home (since the major streets were still bunged up with traffic) and got home just in time to watch American Idol. ;)

How did you all fare with the storm? I'd talk about AI, but I don't want to ruin it for any of you that haven't seen it yet. All I *can* say about it is, what the hell is up with the voting public?! :P