Blog der Familie Brown » Winter

Office Flooding

jeremy — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:35:31 +0000

Now that we have a thaw, my office is taking on water. Hopefully I get relocated somewhere nice.

Schneesturm 2

jeremy — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:41:59 +0000

It’s February, and like lots of the country, we are getting snow. Light, powdery snow. It’s been slowly snowing since Thursday, but fortunately it’s not been heavy.

None of that is really news, and it’s really no big whoop. The real purpose of this post is to post a new picture of the backyard, because the dog house is almost buried.

Schneesturm

jeremy — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:06:43 +0000

It’s snowing in the Red River Valley again. We have had a spate of good weather lately. Which is good, but what makes it even better is that most of our relatives, who live in warmer climates, have been experiencing cooler temperatures. Ha!

Really the only bummer is that the snow is so thick it has knocked out the satellite tv…

Flood!

jeremy — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:59:46 +0000

To continue on with the weather theme, the whole area is abuzz with the latest event: Flood ’09. Fargo is in a prehistoric lake bed (really a silly place to build a city, except maybe it provides a little shelter from the wind?) The problem is that the whole area is flat. Really flat. The river is at flood stage at 18′. They are predicting a crest of 40′ on early Thursday.

The culprits? Lots of snow on the ground, frozen earth, and rain. We’re supposed to have some ice damming, which will make local flooding probable. Luckily, after 1997′s near-record flood the city bought out most of the flood-prone homes and there are some permanent dikes, but everything more or less tops out at 40′. I haven’t been out to do any sand bagging yet, but I most likely will. Heck, it’s only our home

We’ve been keeping a close eye on the National Weather Service’s Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service. and the City’s Flood page. There is a lot of water between where we are at and where they are predicted to be, but back in 2006, we saw the river rise pretty quickly. The city and the Army Corps of Engineers did a great job building temporary dikes and keeping the water at bay.

It looks like they’ve more or less finished building the temporary earthen dikes now, and the effort is focusing on building up a 1.5 million sand bag stockpile.

Blizzard, part Deux

jeremy — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:27:43 +0000

We’ve got another snow storm! This isn’t out of the ordinary for Fargo, but it’s a pretty serious storm. The temperature is about 0°F, and wind is somewhere between 25-42 MPH. They have closed I-94 between Fargo and Jamestown, and I-29 is closed from South Dakota to Canada. Most places closed for the day.

I have also learned that the folks at McDonald’s are made of tougher stuff than the folks at Burger King, either that, or the folks at Burger King care enough to let us know that they’re closing, while the folks at McDonald’s do not. Either way, the fam did not venture out to find which was true.

Post Vacation Pictures

jeremy — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:34:46 +0000

It’s a little depressing coming back to the Winter in Fargo after spending weeks in warmer weather. However, we’ve had a mid-January thaw of sorts, and we get to tell impressive stories of surviving in minus-30˚ weather.

Blizzard!

admin — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:12:47 +0000

We haven’t had an official blizzard in Fargo since we moved here. Now we get one.

From the ND DOT:

THE NORTH DAKOTA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION HAS DECLARED THAT
INTERSTATE 94 FROM JAMESTOWN TO THE MINNESOTA LINE AND INTERSTATE
29 FROM THE SOUTH DAKOTA BORDER TO THE CANADIAN BORDER HAS BEEN
CLOSED.

Usually it doesn’t snow when it’s this cold out. The Weather Service says we are seeing a temperature of -7F and a -37 windchill. It’s pretty cold. It’s hard to tell just how much it has snowed with all the drifting and blowing snow. It is definitely a Winter Wonderland outside!

Old man winter approaches

jeremy — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:47:49 +0000

Frosty Tree

Winter in Fargo lasts a while. At times we get a pleasant-looking frost on the trees, like this guy next to the Cathedral of Saint Mary.

This year, we got snow on March 22, and then the mother of all wet snows on April 6. Fortunately we have a decent snow blower. When it’s that wet, it’s like you’re extruding play-dough. This was by far the longest winter we have seen since we moved here some six years ago. It was fairly mild, in that we didn’t have long stretches of below-zero highs, but it dragged on. The spring didn’t start until June, and then when it did, it was cooler than normal. The garden hasn’t been as productive as in years past. For all of that, we’re getting some good days right about now: highs are in the upper 60′s and lower 70′s, and when it is sunny, it is down right pleasant.

Late March's Snow

April 6 Snow