Saturday, November 26, 2005
The Great (ongoing) Blizzard of Osnabrück
It was only about 3:50 pm when the blackout started, but it was already getting dark (as is the norm here in Osnabrück). It was over as suddenly as it started, leaving me barely enough time to light a few candles so I could see.
And then the power was back out. This process repeated every 5-20 minutes, for the next few hours. I simply unplugged my computer and read a book, switching between candle light and actual light every few minutes. The internet remained down for the next 24 hours or so.
It was the first snow of the year and it came down hard. Osnabrück doesn't get too cold, which probably made this snow even worse. It was rougly -4ºC, which is about 25ºF. The flakes were huge, sopping wet balls coming down from the sky. The snow started yesterday morning and finished sometime overnight.
This naturally made for some fun with snowballs and also problems getting cars out of driveways. (After much effort, I was able to help Christine get her car out of the snow). Some people built snowmen and had some fun with the snow, but nothing anyone did compared to Alec's brilliant idea.
Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out perfectly for this idea as someone had shoveled half of Heger Tor before we got there. Nonetheless, we had a good time in the snow. Before I explain his idea, Heger Tor is a large wall that used to surround the old city (Altstadt). Now there is a piece of it left that has some stairs leading up to it that are all slanted downword. When snow is evenly applied to these strange stairs it creates sort of a ramp going down quite a ways.
Alec's brilliant idea was to create a large snowball at the top and roll it down this ramp to create a massive ball that normally would be impossible because 2 people simply can't roll such a massive ball. A great idea, right? Hey, what the hell else do we have to do on a Saturday. Unfortunately for us, our ball was so squarish that it didn't end up rolling down. So we managed to leave a giant snowball on the steps up to Heger Tor and that was the extent of our accomplishments.
Wetter.de claims that it is going to continue to snow on and off this week. Hopefully there will be more snow-mischeif that is a bit more successful.
And then the power was back out. This process repeated every 5-20 minutes, for the next few hours. I simply unplugged my computer and read a book, switching between candle light and actual light every few minutes. The internet remained down for the next 24 hours or so.
It was the first snow of the year and it came down hard. Osnabrück doesn't get too cold, which probably made this snow even worse. It was rougly -4ºC, which is about 25ºF. The flakes were huge, sopping wet balls coming down from the sky. The snow started yesterday morning and finished sometime overnight.
This naturally made for some fun with snowballs and also problems getting cars out of driveways. (After much effort, I was able to help Christine get her car out of the snow). Some people built snowmen and had some fun with the snow, but nothing anyone did compared to Alec's brilliant idea.
Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out perfectly for this idea as someone had shoveled half of Heger Tor before we got there. Nonetheless, we had a good time in the snow. Before I explain his idea, Heger Tor is a large wall that used to surround the old city (Altstadt). Now there is a piece of it left that has some stairs leading up to it that are all slanted downword. When snow is evenly applied to these strange stairs it creates sort of a ramp going down quite a ways.
Alec's brilliant idea was to create a large snowball at the top and roll it down this ramp to create a massive ball that normally would be impossible because 2 people simply can't roll such a massive ball. A great idea, right? Hey, what the hell else do we have to do on a Saturday. Unfortunately for us, our ball was so squarish that it didn't end up rolling down. So we managed to leave a giant snowball on the steps up to Heger Tor and that was the extent of our accomplishments.
Wetter.de claims that it is going to continue to snow on and off this week. Hopefully there will be more snow-mischeif that is a bit more successful.
