After a week's worth of predictions and dire warnings, Snowmaggedon 2026 has finally come calling in Louisville. Started snowing Saturday afternoon and didn't stop until just a few hours ago.
As far as snowmaggedons go, it was pretty mediocre. They'd been threatening us with upwards of 18 inches of snow with the possibility of ice as a bonus, but we came up well short of that. It's brass monkey weather, so anything that fell stuck and ain't going nowhere anytime soon, so even coming up short still made for quite a mess.
Ended up going out shooting three separate times in a 24 hour span, to document how things progressed and how the neighborhood was dealing with it. Started Saturday afternoon, once the snow defeated the brine they'd pretreated the roads with.
The heavy snow didn't start until late, had to wait until after midnight to go back out in search of proper accumulation.
Wound up turning into quite the interesting evening. The snow was really coming down, LMPD seemed to take a particular interest in me, and somehow managed to briefly pick up a stalker.
They never worked up their nerve to stop and chat, but every few minutes a police cruiser would roll past, and then a few minutes later here it would come again headed the opposite direction. Had more cops slow-roll past me in the two hours of the outing than normally eyeball me in two months of wanderings.
In the midst of all that, some random, creepy dude came walking directly up to me and started following me. Wasn't that 'taking the same path somewhere' sort of thing either, if I stopped, so did he. Doubled back after this went on for a while and got behind him, he just stopped and stared at me. Eventually resumed heading for home and he resumed following me, doubled back again for the same result. My perfunctory acknowledgements in passing had been met with silence and that eerie stare, so there was nothing for it but a game of chicken.
Did I mention he was carrying a clear plastic bag with toilet paper in it the entire time? Was all very bizarre. Finally just went and stood in the middle of Taylor Boulevard to see if he'd follow me into (the largely nonexistent) traffic. Thankfully, the answer was no, just stared from the sidewalk for a minute or so more before wandering off.
Let him get out of sight before making for home, got some shut eye and then was back at it again this afternoon. Snow hadn't bothered to let up, so despite repeated salting and plowing the roads were even worse. Was still a surprising number of people out, driving, walking the dog, or just trying to dig out before the snowplows walled them in.
The city has asked businesses to give their employees a work from home day tomorrow in hopes of making headway on clearing the roads. Will have to venture further afield and see what that looks like.
Anyone else dealing with Snowmaggedon?