A Major Upcoming Snowstorm This Week Is Giving Me Flashbacks
We survived last year’s blizzard and I know this one isn’t as bad but…
I don’t even want to think about what we went through while surviving last year’s historic and deadly blizzard while stuck in Buffalo. It was a lot and I’m just happy to be alive at this point.
Forever in the land of eternal winter
My partner, Mike, insists on staying in the region of eternal winter for the foreseeable future so I just manage. We are in Erie, Pennsylvania again this year. Yeah, that Erie, the one I wrote about in A Day in the Life series. We’re not technically in the city as our campground is in the county but well-removed from the main city.
We thought that coming back to Erie would be better than staying in Western New York and not having a campsite to settle at because at least winter doesn’t get as terrible down here. Also, we will have access to heated bathrooms, water, and electricity. For any food runs, we can either take the RV out or we can order for food to be delivered. We have a nice setup.
Lake Effect Warning, here we go again
Now, this week, I just got an alert on my phone saying that there is a Lake Effect Snow Warning. That is the same alert we got right before the major storm that dumped snow when we were in Buffalo.
My mind immediately went back to last year and the panic and anxiety that we had over the major snowstorm we were braving. I know that this one isn’t as bad as the one we survived but 12–18 inches forecasted for Monday and Tuesday isn’t nothing. Some areas may get more and some less. Having lived in this area previously, I always expect the snow to be at the top end of the forecast if not higher.
Our position at camp is unfavorable ahead of the storm
The winds are also supposed to be around 30 mph or higher with gusts at times. These could lead to blizzard conditions. We don’t need to go anywhere in our RV but we do need to use the bathroom. We are on one side of camp right now and aren’t scheduled to move to the other side of camp until Thursday.
The problem there is that there is a big hill to go up and down to get over to the other side where the functional heated bathroom and water are. I will likely have to do that at least once if not more during the actual storm. I know the campground owner told us that he will plow to make it easy for us to get through but I worry that we could be trapped until the storm is over.
Will we have to resort to questionable things during the storm?
I have been thinking of some inventive ways to figure out how to get things done ahead of the storm. I will need to go to the bathroom multiple times in two days but I’m almost thinking that I might revisit the possibility of creating an emergency dump bucket. I don’t want to be too disgusting but that’s exactly how it sounds. I don’t want to have to go out in winter conditions if I don’t have to and I think that it’ll serve us well temporarily.
I also don't want to feel trapped and run out of supplies, such as diesel for our heater. We have an emergency backup electric heater now. It’s served us well. It definitely helped us last year when the historic blizzard happened. I don’t think that we’ll run out of power and have to hope that our batteries make it through a storm like we did last time. I think that it’s just thinking back on the last storm and how we coped that makes me continually flashback to that.
This storm won’t get the better of us, we’re ready
I feel like we are more prepared for this storm. Again, I don’t think it’ll be anywhere near the historic storm we survived when the generator went out on us and we were mostly trapped inside our old tiny home. It’s just that it’s hard to shake off the similarities and the flashbacks now. We’re still in the land of eternal winter but we moved away from the worst of the snow in the area we’re in now. This area can still get very snowy but we are more used to it than we were out there.
Today, we had a food delivery come to bring us fresh water, snacks, and other supplies to wait out this major storm. We are as ready as we’ll ever be and are looking forward to getting another bad storm out of the way.
