Your Before, During and After Winter Service Solution.
Epic Blizzard 2011
Blizzard 2011 .... It was exciting, exhausting, scary beyond words and fun but ultimately - It was just a lot of snow.
That is probably the sum right there - it was just a lot of snow. In fact I remember shoveling the 78/79 blizzard and plowing the '99 blizzard - no biggies. The '67 they thought was the biggest but I'm here to tell you otherwise. The 2/1/2011 blizzard came in fast and hard and stayed nearly full throttle the entire time. Winds sustained over 40mph and constant gusts to 60mph. 4 inches an hour snow rates and drifts that were insane. But here is the kicker ... With all our modern technology, tv and radio alerts, model maps, public planning and plowing equipment people were still stranded, roads and counties shut down, services shut down and yet we knew better. Simply stated - the 2011 Blizzard was epic and number one event of all time.
The one thing our team was disappointed with is all of the Weather channel and local weather outlets who claimed they were tough as they reported the weather..... from their hotels near Lake Shore Drive. They should have been a ride along with our crews to see life in action. The invitation is open for them to ride along in the future and see what epic is all about - probably too much for them though.
Some interesting facts;
- 1) Our largest drift in a lot which had dedicated service throughout the storm with trucks and front loader grew to 32' tall by 100' long by 200' wide in under 4 hours.
- 2) Over 80% of our lots are drift prone with average drifts growing to 6' in a three hour period. As we rotated through the lots constantly.
- 3) Some lots we plowed edge to edge had an additional 1.5 to 2 foot of snow each time we plowed every 3 hours.
- 4) We counted over 140 abondanded cars.
- 5) Public roads were not passable except by the paths we made until Late Wednesday or Thursday in some cases.
- 6) For nearly 8 hours you could not see beyond 1 foot past your head lights.
- 7) We counted at least 5 transformers that blew taking out street lights and building lights. That was wild.
- 8) Thunder snow is just as scary as it sounds!
- 9) In many areas the only way we made it to our lots as the city and county crews hid from the weather was to use our v-plows to slice a path through the streets for the crews to operate. In fact we freed several vehicles and police cars throughout our route.
- 10) Equipment issues from our crews and partner crews; 1 plow frame ripped from truck, 1 plow wrapped around into truck, 2 plows with severe cracks, 1 alternator, 1 transmission, 1 water pump, 1 steering pump, 1 windsheild wiper motor failure, several hydrolic line failures. Good times.....yet we repaired and continued!
- 11) Did we mention with the timing of the blizzard the glorious state of Illinois also affected change; Increased employer tax to 1/3 of payroll, doubled workmens comp, increased uemployment insurance and caused general insurance companies to increase their costs to us even though NO claims have ever been made. Talk about a beat down.
One of my two favorite sets of pictures are the top two on Tab 3 and the last one on tab 4.
One final thought as we drove around after the storm ended we noticed other lots. The interesting thing to us was our lots were either 100% complete or at 90% complete within 3 hours of the storm completion. How did your snow plow company do?
