{"id":4280,"date":"2013-12-22T01:34:55","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T01:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=4280"},"modified":"2013-12-22T01:34:55","modified_gmt":"2013-12-22T01:34:55","slug":"amarillo-is-snow-wise-on-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=4280","title":{"rendered":"Amarillo is snow-wise on the road"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I am happy to report that I live in a city where drivers actually do know how to drive in the snow and ice.<\/p>\n

Amarillo, Texas is the place. <\/p>\n

It snowed today. Not a lot, but it snowed for most of the afternoon. Not sure when it’ll stop. I think I heard a forecast that called for 3 to 4 inches. <\/p>\n

Here’s what I saw on my way home from work this evening: Cars streaming down three busy streets very slowly and carefully. That was a good thing to see.<\/p>\n

Amarillo gets usually a total winter snow accumulation of about a foot every winter. Last winter, we got nearly twice that amount in one heap. It paralyzed the city, which is really saying something. It takes a great deal of snow to close school systems here. Last winter, they closed for three or four days before enough snow melted to make the streets passable.<\/p>\n

This evening was not an unusual event. I call attention to it only because I hear so many stories — constantly, it seems — about folks in cities where residents do not know how to handle the snow. I’ve lived in a couple of them, actually: Portland, Ore., where I was born and where I grew up, and Beaumont, Texas, where snow and ice are quite rare, but not totally out of the question.<\/p>\n

Portland gets snow most winters. However, for some reason Portlanders seem to get caught on hilly streets with cars skidding out of control. Beaumont? That’s another story altogether. I remember just one winter during our nearly 11 years there when snow fell and ice coated the streets. You would have thought the world had just come to an end. <\/p>\n

We moved to Amarillo in early 1995 and we’ve seen our fair share of severe winters. We’ve had some mild winters as well, but the long-timers around here remember the old days when blizzards would blind everyone. Highways would close. Livestock would freeze to death. <\/p>\n

Through it all, they managed to get through in their vehicles.<\/p>\n

It’s still true. Yes, I know some folks have seen madness on the streets during snow storms on the High Plains. I’ve seen it, too. <\/p>\n

Still, I’m glad my normally five-minute drive home from work tonight took me 30 minutes to complete. Go slow and be very careful out there.<\/p>\n\n

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I am happy to report that I live in a city where drivers actually do know how to drive in the snow and ice. Amarillo, Texas is the place. It snowed today. Not a lot, but it snowed for most of the afternoon. Not sure when it’ll stop. I think I heard a forecast that … Continue reading Amarillo is snow-wise on the road<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[276,3217,4296],"class_list":["post-4280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-amarillo","tag-national-weather-service","tag-snow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}