Blizzard Hits Midwest: Pictures from Des Moines and the Quad Cities

A winter storm bore down on 10 states, bringing with it snowdrifts, bitterly cold temperatures and wind gusts, in the Quad Cities, of close to 40 mph. In New Mexico, a 100 mph wind gust tore the roof off the Los Alamos police station, and in Nashville (TN) the Christmas tree in front of the state capitol was broken in half by the wind.

Parts of Interstate 80 were closed near Des Moines (Newton area) and anything west and north of us was getting hammered all day.

I ventured out on Wednesday, December 9th, and took some pictures, but first let me post some from Des Moines, which got more snow than we did:

This photo represents my friend’s car, parked outside their house in Des Moines. To begin with, the car could not be driven to their house and a neighbor had to push it with his four-wheel drive vehicle. Why? Because the snow and wind was so bad in Des Moines that road crews had been pulled and their (relative) side street had not been plowed. Secondly, as luck would have it, their snowblower was broken. They eventually grabbed shovels and, with a neighbor’s help, were able to unearth the car lurking under all the snow in this picture.  And now for a few other snow shots:

This photo happens to have been taken of the fir tree

right next to my garage entryway. Needs Christmas

lights.

For this one, go back to the top of the page and take a look at “Big Blue,” as I call the 300 lb. ceramic frog that sits on the edge of our back yard ravine. Right now, “Big Blue” looks more like “Big White.” The ravine is quite beautiful, with drifts around the wrought iron lawn furniture (right in the photo) and frosted trees, but it’s really too cold to stand outside admiring it for long.

This one is a picture of the Celebration Belle, one of the riverboats (or riverboat replicas) that sit alongside Ben Butterworth Parkway in Moline, Illinois. The boat has a paddlewheel, and the paddlewheel was rotating vigorously in the 37 mph wind(s). I almost got hit by the car behind me as I attempted to pull into the parking lot to take this shot, because the parking lots have not been plowed and it turned out to be a hopeless project to try to get close to the boat on that side of the river. (This is taken from across the street.)

If you look closely at this Moline sign, you can see that    snow was still falling and the wind was in full force. The sign sits near the railroad line that cuts through town, and it establishes that this snow was, indeed, hitting the Quad Cities area of Moline, East Moline, Bettendorf (IA), Davenport (IA), and all the many other smaller cities that make up an area with the misnomer “Quad.” LeClaire (IA), up the river, was without power for several hours (from 9 a.m. on) and over 6,000 homes lost their power in the snow and wind. Jane Addams Elementary School in Moline (IL) lost its power and heat. They sent the students home but required the teachers to come to work.

I saw one woman in a red car crash into a snow plow, and I heard reports of over 260 tickets being issued in Davenport (IA), tickets telling the driver that the car must be moved from the city streets so that snow plows could operate. The tickets are $35 each. Someone calculated that the city was going to reap a windfall of $9,100 from the tickets, alone. Add to that Davenport’s disputed camera system at intersections, which send you tickets by mail if you are photographed going through the yellow portion of a red light, and the winter white becomes green for the cash-strapped city.

In the Quad Cities, the best snow removal trophy always seems to go to Silvis and East Moline. Moline: not so much. Davenport: really horrible. Rock Island: ditto. I don’t know why this is, but c’est la vie. Also, in the Homewood area of Moline…a chi chi area that predated Wildwood as the city’s finest, the streets are narrow and winding. On top of that, telephone lines and power lines were strung through the ravine/woody areas that surround the homes. Jane Addams is near Homewood. I have friends and relatives who live in Homewood. They lose their power all the time because the power lines run through the heavily wooded area and, whenever a tree branch falls on a power line during a storm like this, power goes out. I’ll bet money that this may have been a factor in the loss of Jane Addams’ power. (No other elementary schools were released, I heard on the news.

Another thing that has come to light as a result of this snowfall, which seems new, to me, is Channel 6’s “new policy” of NOT running news of cancellations in a crawl on their screen unless it is a school closing. The announcers on KWQC gave a very long (and involved) explanation and directions to rush to your computer, sign in, kiss your elbow 3 times and a lot of other complicated directions to find out if a meeting is being canceled as a result of the storm. What if, like my 91-year-old mother-in-law, you don’t HAVE a computer? What if, like me, it sounds like waaaay more work than it should be, just to find out whether the bridge game at the local meeting place has been canceled or if the musical performance at the River Music Experience is “on” or “off”? Whatever happened to informing the community? Why is it just schools, now, that are going to be allowed to have a crawl at the bottom of the screen? If I were Channel 6, which has been having some financial problems of late, I hear, I’d rethink this policy. Anyone with a clicker will change to Channels 8 or 4, which seem to still care if their viewers stay tuned in and will provide a crawl with informatino about cancellations other than schools. Think about it.