One of the most annoying but most prominent components of this school year has been Winterpocalypse, Flagstaff’s worst winter in several years. So far, there have been several components to Winterpocalypse.
Part I of Winterpocalypse was a massive snow storm that we saw during finals week in December, 2009. It was the first real blizzard Flagstaff had seen in a decade or longer, and it was the first time in, purportedly, just about ever, the university had canceled classes during finals week.
Part II of Winterpocalypse happened over the winter break, I’m just really sure that snow fell then.
Part III of Winterpocalypse was in mid-January when school was, again, delayed and then canceled for a few days while the university, the city and the state all declared a state of emergency and tried to catch up with the snow clearing.
After that, there was a few weeks of calm, slightly rising temperatures, which I have called “The Spring of False Hope.” We even lost an inch or so of the accumulation due to the slight amount of heat involved in The Spring of False Hope. Directly after the Sprint of False Hope, came Part IV of WinterPocalypse.
In Part IV, we got two phases of snow — the first was rain coupled with slightly slushy type snow that tends to be fairly fun in that it starts sticking to the ground very quickly, and very terrifying in that traveling down I-17 or I-40 is at a speed of about 20 to 30 miles per hour. The slush was followed directly by what I consider to be just about the worst possible type of snow. Snow so light and dry that later on the day it stopped falling, it was still like it was falling to people walking around, except faster, being blown around by nearly gale-force winds.
By today, it seems as though another Spring of False Hope has started — today I wore normal shoes to work, and the sun was even warm on my skin as I walked from the dorm to work. How long this will last, nobody knows.