I understand folks needing to get out and do things when the weather turns sour, and I see the U.W. Hospital kept spare beds and food available for their staff to mitigate a bad commute. The county hasn't asked me to stay downtown this weekend, but did for senior and mission-essential staff. I was home by 6 PM Saturday as the heavy stuff started coming down, and was glad to be inside by then. We all stayed home and just watched High Definition cable channels and baked tollhouse cookies.
I was reading the Wisconsin DOT road reports at midnight and 3 AM today, with stretches of the Interstate labeled "Ice Covered and Hazardous" or even "Impassable".
It saddened me to hear that a woman, her teenage daughter, and 8 year-old nephew decided to head somewhere during the blizzard, then lost control of their minivan on a curve and hit a county snowplow truck head-on. The mother and daughter died instantly, the nephew was declared dead at the hospital. The snowplow driver escaped unharmed, but was seriously traumatized by the event.
So what was so damned important that they had to go buzzing around in their minivan during the worst blizzard of the year?
Highway 151 runs behind my back yard. Earlier this morning, my wife and I had the dogs out back for a potty break when we heard the distinctive crunch of metal-on-metal coming from the highway. One driver got squirrely, and another ran right into him, sending both of them into the shoulder.
If there's anything ironic about the storm and how people handle it, it's looking in the medians and shoulders for vehicles that spun out, and seeing Explorers, Suburbans, Tahoes, Cherokees, Durangos and other big 4x4 vehicles, some flipped on their sides or even upside down. They seem to have an invincibility thing going...