Hazard of Being a Weathergirl: Getting Stuck in the Snow on the Way to Work at 1 AM

So the title says it all. I ended up getting stuck in the snow on my way out of my neighborhood this morning.

I left the house at 1 AM - needed to be in by 2. That gave me a good hour for driving. We live at the bottom of a hill and at 1 AM the plow has not come through the neighborhood streets yet. So I get go and I'm driving up the hill - then I'm not driving up the hill. I couldn't go forward and I could go backwards. I was stuck at an angle in the street. I was rarin' my tires and they were just spinning. My car was making a ton of noise. I'm surprised I didn't wake up all the neighbors! (I did hear dogs barking, if that counts.)

In my five years of doing the weather (in Wisconsin, no less) - I have never gotten my car stuck!
I ended up getting out of the car to walk down the hill back to the house - as Chris was not waking up to my many phone calls. I get to the house and have to walk upstairs to get him out of bed, as he didn't hear me from the garage door yelling for him.

Chris finally made it outside and gave me a push so I could work my way backwards down the street. He tells me to back up as far as a can and gun it. So I try that - but I get stuck in the same exact spot. I try one more time. No luck. I'm starting to get very frustrated. I feel like this is so DUMB that someone is trying to get out of the house for work at 1 in the morning in a snow storm. It's even dumb when that person is a meteorologist in my opinion.

There are a couple other streets that I could try to get out of the neighborhood - but they all involve going up a hill. Chris tells me to try the next street over. Thank goodness I did. I made it up the hill, but I was doubtful as I got closer to the top. My wheels started getting that "I'm going to get stuck" feeling and that "I'm going to get stuck" sound. But I made it to the top just in time.

The next couple streets were just as bad. In fact, the whole trip was pretty bad. Surprisingly enough, the interstate was the best part of the trip.

I made it to work at 2 AM. Halleluia!!!

Work was actually very fun. My chief meteorologist came in at 7:30. We were going to tag team the weather during the morning show. He gave the currents, road conditions, and snow totals, then tossed it to me for the forecast for the rest of the day and the next 7 days. We had two reporters out live in the field. One in a neighborhood where branches were falling all around the guy and the other gal was near the interstate.

This has been a pretty bad storm for us. We saw a quarter of an inch to as much as an inch of ice on Saturday because of freezing rain and sleet. Then, last night the snow started falling. There was a break when I was driving in - but another round of snow started around 5 AM and lasted through 1 AM. At last count, we were at 6 inches of snow in Des Moines. And remember that is on top of ice. As many as 140,000 residents in Iowa were without power this morning and the governor declared 58 counties as in a State of Emergency with all the downed trees and powerlines and such.

And it is very wet heavy snow at that. Gotta love the Spring snowstorms.

I'm home now and Chris and I just took a short walk. I snapped a couple pictures. Here's our house in the snow:

Here is the trail that we run, walk, and bike on in the warm months. Notice how low the trees are hanging:

I'm home now. I've been up since Midnight - time to relax and watch the Oscars!! (Jamaica here we come... on Thursday!!!)