He decided to do that after checking the forecast (which includes a blizzard warning for our area) and noticing that there was a lull in the snowfall from 7-8:30 am. It had already picked up and it was "sleeting" pretty bad when he left by 9:50, though. Now it's mostly a light snow.Our lane (it's a "three-house-long" street) was cleaned 20 minutes before he left, so that allowed him to drive away comparably safely. I'm hoping the highways will be fine, the only problem will be reaching them from the house and then transitioning between major highways. The university itself is right next to a major highway, so I guess that the conditions won't be too bad.
I wanted to include an update with this post and I called K, but he didn't pick up the phone. I'll update the post as we talk on the phone later today. Now I have to continue cleaning the driveway (I want to do it before more snow accumulates and then I'll re-do it after the storm is over tonight). Keep K in your thoughts and prayers today, OK? Thanks!
Edit 1 at 12:28 pm:
I just talked to K on the phone for a while. What he's doing is completely crazy, and he's never seen so much of the white stuff in his life, but he's safe so far. Some parts of the highway are cleaner than others and he's had to drive over 3 inches or more of snow at times. A mildly unfortunate thing happened, in using Google Maps to try to help him find the best way to transition from one highway to another I unwittingly made him take an exit into another road (with worse driving conditions). It will add only 3 miles to the trip, but I hope it's not a big problem. He just hung up and will call me later and then I'll have a second update. He'll probably get there safely, but still, I wish he had listened to me yesterday and traveled yesterday afternoon... sigh.
2nd update at 12:57 pm:
K is on the second highway now, the one that basically cuts through the university. We just spent some minutes on the phone with me reading these two articles of the Chronicle to him: "Preparing for Campus Interviews" and "The Academic Job Interview Revisited." We printed them out before he left, a copy for me to read and a copy for him. I hope it helps! Now I'll go back to shoveling some more.
3rd update 1:58 pm - K exited to eat and now found out that the Interstate has been CLOSED! I think K will try to hang out in a hotel lobby for a few hours, I hope they'll allow him to. :-(
4th update, 2:58: K wasted an hour because couldn't park at the hotel (too much snow) so he's driving towards Maryland now on a smaller road. What a nightmare. And to top it off, I accidentalky left the phone off the hook for 45 minutes while he was frantically trying to call me. We talked briefly just now, but got cut off. I'm getting worried now.
5th update 3:29: No worries, he's just fine. It has stopped snowing for over an hour there. It's very like Pennsylvania to close its highways... I don't like this state much. In any case, it's not snowing where he is, but the wind is strong. K will have to drive on a smaller road, parallel to the highway all the way to the Maryland border and there the highway is open and it should take him two hours at most (we hope) to get to his destination. Now I'll go back to shoveling the driveway a third time. I actually enjoy it a lot, but more on that later.
5:11 pm: K's in Maryland now. He realized that he had crossed the state line because the road was way better (cleaner). PA doesn't seem to use enough salt on its roads. He's just got into the highway now and it is clean, so in less than two hours he'll reach his destination. It looks like this will be the next to last update. Phew!
8pm: It took K 9h30 to get there, instead of 4h30, but he's safely there. Now I hope everything goes well tomorrow.
And I'm glad this live-blogging post is finally over!
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