Global Warming continues unabated. From the National Weather Service:

Issued by The National Weather Service
Baltimore/Washington, MD
3:04 pm EST, Mon., Feb. 8, 2010

… WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM NOON TUESDAY TO 7 PM EST WEDNESDAY…

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN STERLING VIRGINIA HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR… WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM NOON TUESDAY TO 7 PM EST WEDNESDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.

* PRECIPITATION TYPE… SNOW.

* ACCUMULATIONS… 10 TO 20 INCHES.

* TIMING… MID-AFTERNOON TUESDAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY.

Honestly, we are flat out of space for snow in our neighborhood. I have no idea where we are going to be able to put an additional 20 inches of snow. This is really getting old….

One final gaggle of snow pictures before everyone heads off to their respective Super Bowl parties. We finally did get out for a drive through Columbia to check things out.

For the most part, the main roads were clear, but in some locations lanes just disappeared like this right-turn only lane from 175 to Thunder Hill Road.

I still love the look of untouched snow over a large area. It just looks so peaceful.

The parking lot for the American City Building and General Growth Properties had been plowed and could easily be used tomorrow.

The Lakefront looked beautiful in the snow, but none of the sidewalks had been shoveled out yet.

The Mall in Columbia was open for business, but as you can see from the parking lot, not a lot of people made it over there despite the wide open parking lots.

Now for some random photos I found interesting driving around. I found another tree that gave in to the snow.

And remember the car stuck in the left-turn only lane I showed earlier? It is still there.

Finally, after someone spends all the time digging out their car and wants to take a drive somewhere, there is a simple security device to make sure no one takes their hard-earned spot.

Too funny. The public schools in Howard County are already shut down for Monday. The local weather people claim we could a some more snow on Tuesday, so we get to this all over again.

It is the day after the big snow storm and a lot people who hadn’t bothered to touch their cars yesterday were out in force today. Since we cleared out our cars yesterday, we decided to take a small walk. Our county road has some mixed results. In some areas, the road is clear down to the pavement.

And in other areas, not so much.

And because the road has only been clear for about a lane and a half, when two cars are trying to pass, it can be a little tricky, as they two cars were finding out trying to pass the same point at the same time.

But at least their cars are moving, unlike these three cars that appear to have gotten stuck on Friday night and decided to walk the rest of the way home.

I actually came home Friday night around 9:00pmand had to pass by this section. Even then, the road was already becoming difficult to drive in. If they got to this point as little as an hour later, my guess is they had trouble making it up the hill in this spot. It appears they just left their car behind and went to their house. We walked out a little further to the main state road (technically it is a county road too that changes to a state road a half mile away). As you can see, there is still a decent layer of snow still on the road.

There were a few cars on the road, although all the cars that passed us were clearly taking it easy and not nearly reaching the speed limit of the road.

Now the funny one. Check out this car that is just about buried in snow. What is humorous is that the car is currently sitting in what is a left-turn only lane. Like the cars earlier, he clearly got stuck on Friday night and decided to abandon his car in place.

What sucks is that this car will probably be there for a while and make it that much more difficult for the snow plows to fully clear the road. This was about the only sidewalk that I found cleared in my nearby neighborhood.

Hopefully no one has a fire because getting to this fire hydrant might be a tad tricky.

And to finish things off, a shot of the Oliver Carriage House in Town Center.

My prediction for tomorrow is schools will be closed, but most employers will be open including the Government with Liberal Leave policies in place.

What’s this I see on horizon? Is that blue skies?

Thank goodness. It appears the snow has basically ended, much earlier than many weatherpeople were predicting on TV, and our neighborhood roads has basically been cleared.

And since the snow had stopped, our neighbors and us decided to get our cars cleaned off. We had to leave a wall of snow between our cars since we just flat ran out of space to put the snow.

Part of cleaning of the cars was selfish on my part because I wanted to make sure I had a place to put the snow before my neighbors tried to clean off their cars. Unforutnately the main county road is still covered in snow, so I think we are in for the night.

Finally, I thought I’d finish with this shot, which I thought looked rather cool.

That’ll be it for snow updates for today. Maybe will have some tomorrow if we manage to get out and drive for a little bit tomorrow.

Since my Villanova Wildcats were getting their ass handed to them by Georgetown, I decided to head back outside and found our neighborhood Bobcat had finally made it to in front of my house and car.

Check out how high that pile of snow is just next to the Bobcat. I told my fiance she needed to give me the ring back because I wanted to marry the Bobcat driver for clearing out the front of my car.

Of course the problem is I still haven’t actually cleaned off my car and there is just about no place to put the snow still on everyone’s car…like these people.

Yes, those are cars under those lumps. This once 25-foot tall tree succumbed to the weight of the snow.

So we finally headed out to check things out and thanks to Bobcat man, our road in our neighborhood was rather clear.

Unfortunately, while our neighborhood’s road are clear, we are not going to get much farther as the main road still has close to six inches on the road.

The only was you are getting around today is on foot, like this guy.

Here are two snow plows that are trying to figure out the best way to move all this snow around.

Finding the entrance to my neighborhood is going to be somewhat difficult shortly as our entrance sign is about to be buried.

The local news says we still have five more hoursof this stuff to deal with. It was getting cold out there again so we decided to not venture out any further yet. Maybe when it stops snowing tonight, we will try to make it out to the state road to see how things are. Of course, we will do it on foot….

I ventured out for a second time and clear apath next to my car.

I’ll wait to actually brush off my car until later when there is a faint possibility of actually leaving. My neighbors are also trying to dig around their cars.

Our neighborhood Bobcat is now helping clear out the road as well and is about thirty minutes from getting to the spot in front of my house. As you can see on the right hand side of the picture, getting mail in the near future will be problematic.

Once he gets over to near our house, I’ll go out for Round 3 and head out to the main road to see what’s up. For now, I think I’ll stay warm inside and watch my Villanova Wildcats take down Georgetown on ESPN, which somehow is still being played in DC despite this ridiculous snow in the DC area…

This site has been a little dead lately, but I figured the latest round of “Global Warming” would be a perfect time to get things started again. I like snow, but this snowstorm is just awful. Fluffy snow like we got right before Christmas is pretty and nice and easy to shovel. This stuff is just wet, heavy and annoying. I haven’t made it more than twenty feet outside my front door. Here is a shot before I started even shoveling this mroning (after shoveling almost 6 inches last night).

Now a shot down what is supposed to be a sidewalk.

My bush is completely weighed down, so this sidewalk is probably not going to be used for a while.

Even if they plow the roads, clearly I am not going anywhere for a while.

Thankfully I just cleaned out my gutters recently.

Might as well just take a seat and wait things out.

Or maybe not. Since clearly I am not going anywhere for a while, I am sure I will have more pictures later from a little further outside of my house.

They are expecting a record snowfall in this snowstorm as well as easily passing the record for snowfall in a winter with this snow. Ever. The good thing is this will just make it that much easier to laugh in the face of anyone who claims we have “Global Warming” ever again….

As far as I know, Martin O’Malley has not yet made any appearances in Howard County or statewide in the context of the 2010 gubernatorial race. And I am pretty sure that no active Republican candidates have either. Therefore, when Larry hogan showed up at the Howard County Republican Club Meeting on Thursday night and declared that this was his first “campaign speech”, Howard Countymay have be responsible for starting the 2010 Gubernatorial race. He was a quick shot of Hogan rallying the troops.

The first minute when I walked through the door, I was grabbed by some of the statewide officials to get my picture taken with Mr. Hogan (the reason I still have my jacket on).

By the way, if you are a republican in Howard County, and I know there are 50,000+ of you out there, and have not been attending the HCRC events, you are really missing out. Even during the years I was an officer in the club, I never saw the crowds and excitement that are at events these days. In fact, they announced at the meeting that the next First Friday Happy hour had to be relocated because the HCRC had outgrown Champps. If you have ever been to CHampps, you know it is not a small place. So the fact that the FF Happy Hour has to be moved just shows how large this club is getting. Exciting times….

In what have been the worst kept secret among Republicans, Larry Carson is reporting in The Baltimore Sun what was a huge item being discussed yesterday at Allan Kittleman’s fundraiser.

Trent Kittleman, a former Ehrlich administration transportation official and member of a prominent Howard County Republican political family, said she’s seriously considering running for county executive next year.
….
“I’m forming an exploratory committee to see if I can raise an adequate amount of money,” she said. She’ll likely make a final decision early next year.

Honestly I can’t believe this had not leaked out before now. I’ve been hearing about this for close to a month and the number of people who came up to me asking me about it and had heard about it makes me a wonder how it is a surprise to anyone at this point. But apparently Wordbones, who I thought was more in tune with things, was completely unaware of it as late as two weeks ago.

Welcome to the new and improved Looking At Howard County, brought to you by the same people who have been bringing you The Hedgehog Report for the past seven and a half years.

My goal for this new and improved blog is to concentrate solely on issues facing Howard County.   It will have a political tone to most posts, but there will be plenty of posts completely unrelated to politics.

Looking At Howard County now has it’s own separate blog that is independent from The Hedgehog Report.  At some point, i am going to try and import the old Howard County posts from the original Hedgehog Report into this blog, for the time being, it will be a fresh start.  If you want to look at the old posts, you can find them here.

Start looking for new posts in the near future.