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Igloo for sale – it’s snow fun!

Meg Hibbert — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:14:49 +0000

SALEM – “Igloo for sale. One owner. Free air conditioning. You move.”

That could be the description in a real estate ad for the “building” Matt Thomas constructed. Thomas is an unemployed construction worker who got tired of sitting around the house during the recent snows.

So he put his construction skills to work and built an almost-8-foot-tall igloo in the front yard of his parents’ house at 400 W. Burwell St., behind the Salem Post Office.

Matt Thomas, right, built this 7-1/2-foot tall igloo that Realtor Doug Roberts jokingly is offering for sale. Photo by Meg Hibbert

Realtor Doug Roberts, who lives down the street, saw the day-glow-orange-outlined snow house last week, and asked to put one of his for-sale signs out front.

The sign he had with him said “100 percent financing, $8,000 tax rebate.”

“The asking price would be at least 12 grand,” joked Roberts, who works with Wainwright & Co. Realtors in Salem.

“If they can move it, they can have it,” responded Thomas, with a laugh.

The 27-year-old said he spent parts of three days building the open-air igloo, “Using a cooler like you take to work. I just stomped the snow down in it to make blocks,” he added, “and put them around in a circle. I quit when I couldn’t reach any higher to put on a top.”

What else can you do with more than a foot of snow on the ground? Create a giant head, with a sign reading "Help, it's really deep," like Dr. Jim Reinhard and his daughter, Paris Eve, did in front of their Broad Street home in Salem. Photo by Rich Gaynor

He mused that once high winds died down, he might put a big umbrella over the hole. I addition to the day-glo paint, he decorated the igloo with 2-foot-long icicles he broke off his family’s roof, and painted them orange, too.

His girlfriend, Jennifer Hodges of Salem, supervised, she said, “but I didn’t help build it.”

Thomas started Sunday night, Feb. 7, and finished up two days later. After getting the blocks laid and smoothed over with sow, “I sprayed it with a water hose to make it more solid. I must have done a good job building it, because that wind Tuesday didn’t knock it down,” he said.

Thomas said he had some extra day-glo paint lying around, so he outlined the snow blocks. “I figured I’d make it look like something. You can see the orange coming down the street,” he added.

The igloo is almost warm inside, compared to outside temperatures, he found when taking shelter from the wind while building it.

Would he build an igloo again?

“Sure. I’d try to make it a little more sophisticated next time. Maybe a castle, something you could walk around,” he said.

Thomas has been doing some shoveling of driveways, and is looking for a job, he said, but jobs, especially construction work, is hard to find. He attended Salem High School, and is considering going back for his GED.

He lives with his mom, Connie Gardner, and stepfather David Clayton, and brother Boo Clayton, who is 19.

Roanoke College Bast Center’s roof weighed down by snow

Meg Hibbert — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:28:39 +0000

SALEM – This winter’s heavy snowfall is taking a toll on another roof in the Salem area. Roanoke College’s Bast Athletic Complex, which houses a gymnasium, classrooms and offices, was closed today because of the amount of snow on its roof.

Tonight’s men’s basketball game against Hampden-Sydney has been moved to Hollins University. The game will be at 7 p.m. at Hollins’ gym.

Classes in the Bast building are also being moved temporarily, and the college’s Belk Fitness Center in the same building is closed for now.

Faculty, staff and students were notified shortly before noon by campus e-mail by Tom Turner, director of campus safety.

The situation was described as “a weather related maintenance problem” in the e-mail, affecting the Bast Athletic Complex and the Belk Fitness Center.

Turner said college administrators, physical plant employees and an outside contractor, who was not named, are working to assess the situation.

The Bast building has the largest roof on campus, according to Roanoke College officials.

Craig schools start losing spring break days to snow

Meg Hibbert — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:51:46 +0000

CRAIG COUNTY – Snow, snow and more snow has caused Craig County Schools to be closed nine of the system’s 11 built-in snow days – so far.

Graduation is still set for June 12, the superintendent promises, and state-mandated Standards of Learning writing tests remain scheduled to start March 2. But if Craig County students have to miss more than the remaining two days left that are built into this year’s 2009-1010 calendar, their Spring Break will get shorter, School Superintendent Ron Gordon said Monday.

With more than a foot of snow on the ground already, this lone oak tree across Rt. 311 from Mountain View Church stands proudly with its limbs perfectly lined with fresh snow on Feb. 7. Photo by Sue Sublett Bostic

“We missed the ninth day as of Monday,” he said. “After we miss 11 days we have to start making up days, and will use Easter break starting with that Friday, April 9, and moving backwards if we have to. We also have Memorial Day which could be used for a makeup day if we need it.”

Right now, Craig County Schools’ Spring Break is scheduled for April 2-9.

This Friday, Feb. 12, that is scheduled as an early release day for students and a half-day teacher workday, will remain half day, Gordon said. If necessary, future half-days could become whole days for students, he added.

When asked if Saturday school might be an option, he said, “It is not totally out, if we need to have more days.”

Although more-than 45 inches of snow has fallen so far since the first storm in mid-December for the Roanoke Valley and even more in parts of Craig County, this isn’t the worst winter Gordon can recall.

“I remember as a kid in high school, in 1960, we missed a solid month of school. It snowed every Wednesday starting in February and going through March,” said Gordon, who lived in North Carolina then. “A late winter storm that caused winter sports to be delayed for about a month.”

Craig students only went to school one day out of five last week, on Thursday, Feb. 4. They missed three more days this week – Monday and Tuesday – after last weekend’s storm dumped an additional foot or so of snow on top of the 8 inches already on the ground from the previous weekend.

Gordon said he hoped students would be able to go to school on Tuesday this week, after press time, “but it depends on what the weather does overnight. The last forecast I saw was for 2-5 inches tonight.”

Even though students, staff and teachers were at home for the past few days, Gordon was in his office and on Sunday, rode the roads to check icy conditions on Sunday, he said.

“I will ride the roads again this afternoon to check the roads that were visibly bad Sunday,” he said.

Editor’s note: Students missed a second and third day this week after press time, and could miss additional days following a snow and sleet storm that coated roads with another 2-plus inches Tuesday night.

Mother Nature sent the wrong order

Meg Hibbert — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:50:46 +0000

I looked out the window in the full moon the other night and half expected to see wolves streaking across the snow fields.

I know it’s been more than 100 years since the last known wolf was killed in the South, in the Great Smoky Mountains in 1905, but maybe we’re not living in the South any more.

Icicles in Salem more than a foot long are among this winter's more beautiful results. Photo by Meg Hibbert

Our part of Virginia has totaled more than twice the average snowfall so far. And it’s only the first week of February.

I contend Mother Nature got her winter orders for V states confused, and sent Vermont’s snowy winter to Virginia.

There has to be some explanation more fanciful than El Nino, and global warming’s effects.

I used to like snow. Well, really, I still do: watching fluffy flakes fall while I’m snugly inside with a cup of hot chocolate, wrapped in the zebra-striped Snuggie my sweet husband, Bill, got me for my birthday.

Or snows that amount to about 3 inches and melt off the roads right away.

Tuesday I truly enjoyed seeing individual flakes settle on my dark purple coat. There were needle-shaped snow bits, and interspersed, absolutely perfect snowflake-shaped ones, the first I’ve really seen up close this season.

I like watching our 14-year-old Shitzu-mix dog, Savannah, bounce up and down like a rabbit through the snow, harkening back to her puppy days.

But snow-packed-into ice on the hills I go over to get home is a different story. My husband was stuck on the hill in our late son Rex’s Hyundai and blocking the road by the time I got there Monday afternoon. Neighbors Carlton Janney and Dane Burch scraped enough ice off for him to creep up the grade after about 15 minutes.

Tuesday night is his late night because he teaches an income tax class at National College. Even though every other college in the region canceled night classes, National didn’t. Since I’m the one with the 4-wheel drive, as I write this I’m waiting at the office for Bill to carpool home. I’ve already tried Wildwood Road and couldn’t even turn into our private road because of the ice so I had to roll backwards and approach from the other direction.

I’m sure the rest of it is doable. But if not, I’ll park the Durango and Bill and I will at least be able to walk up that icy hill together. You know the saying, when share your life with somebody you love, you have half the troubles and twice as much happiness.

Roanoke County, other schools closed Tuesday

Meg Hibbert — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:02:44 +0000

SCHOOLS CLOSED AGAIN – Roanoke County Schools will be closed on Tuesday because of snow and ice-covered roads, as will schools in Montgomery County, Franklin and Floyd as well as Radford City Schools. Craig County had not announced a schedule for Tuesday as of 5 p.m. Ten inches of snow fell Jan. 29 and 30 turned into ice-packed roads with sub-freezing temperatures, and predictions called for possible icy rain overnight Tuesday. Salem Schools opened two hours late on Monday.

Icy diversion – College student builds igloo

Meg Hibbert — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:30:08 +0000

SALEM – Although most college students catch up on their sleep while home during their Christmas break, Jenny Lewis decided on the spur of the moment to build an igloo. In her parents’ back yard. In Salem.

The Notre Dame graduate student was burned out from writing papers and finishing exams in her the sacred music graduate program she’s doing, she explained. And so when the 16-inch-record snowfall the week before Christmas provided plenty of building material, she set out to construct one of the snow dome houses the Eskimos made famous.

Jenny Lewis relaxes in the doorway of the 8-foot igloo she built in the back yard of her parents' home in Salem while she was home on break from graduate school at Notre Dame. Photo courtesy Jenny Lewis

Lewis started out with some ideas she gathered from the Internet, a 15-quart Tupperware container from her family’s kitchen, a cheese knife, a garden trowel and high ideals.

“I figured it surely can’t take more than a day or two to finish this,” Lewis said, on the second day of molding snow, stacking it and smoothing it into place in her family’s back yard in the shadow of 12 O-clock Knob.

Altogether, it took her 12 days and the help of her dad, Patrick, and her boyfriend, Kyle Ubl.

She documented her work and her thoughts in a Facebook album she titled, “how to build an igloo in Southwest Virginia.” You can see the photos at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2256589&id=5613465&l=63747f4a7f.

Lewis recruited Ubl’s help to make ice windows, and to figure out how to lay snow and ice bricks to make the dome top. “It helps to have a boyfriend who is a mason’s son and knows how to lay bricks,” she said. Ubl is a senior at Notre Dame, majoring in music and English, “but he plans on going to Law School at Notre Dame next year,” she added.

He’s also more accustomed to heavy snows and cold temperatures, being from New Ulm, Minn.

It was the first time the 2005 Glenvar High School student ever built an igloo, she said, “but I had buit snow forts with my dad when I was younger.”

The finished igloo is 8 feet tall, about 9 feet across and can hold four to six people.

She knows, because Lewis and Ubl, her dad and mom, Theresa Lewis, and her grandparents, Carl and Ula Lorber who live nearby, had a party inside the igloo when it was finished. They even roasted marshmallows inside over candles.

“We are actually quite cozy,” she wrote on her Facebook account. “It was nigh on 40 degrees inside there, while outside it was about 25 and windy.”

She furnished it with benches, pillows, a braided rug borrowed from her parents, a vase of silk flowers and colorful candles she and her boyfriend made from wax left over from a family craft project and old crayons, molded in pottery containers her mother made.

A week after Lewis finished the ice structure and headed back north, the igloo is still there.

When interviewed the day before she left Jan. 8 to drive back, she joked, “With this weather, it will probably stay until March, but the roof is already getting thinner.”

Knowing what she knows now, would Lewis build an igloo again? “I might, in about another 10 years…when I have kids old enough to help. I’m kind of tired of looking at snow.”

Open air roof causes Fort Lewis students to dine in classrooms

Meg Hibbert — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:11:31 +0000

SALEM – There’s an open-air cafeteria at Fort Lewis Elementary school these days – but no one is eating in it.

Students are eating in their classrooms this week and probably will be for weeks or even months until a new roof is constructed over the cafeteria.

Coleman-Adams employees Charlie Robertson, Anthony Lewis and Joe Crown move out building materials out of the Fort Lewis Elementary School's cafeteria Jan. 5, after record snow caved in the roof. Photo by Meg Hibbert

Melting snow from December’s record snowfall slid off the adjacent roof of their school’s gymnasium Dec. 21, sending tons of snow crashing through the lower roof of the cafeteria while the school was closed for the winter break.

Engineers were on the scene Tuesday, inspecting and assessing the damage, while workers from Coleman-Adams Construction continued removing debris and cleaning out the cafeteria.

Students ate bagged lunches the first two days after they returned from the break on Jan. 4, but were expected to start having hot lunches again later this week, Principal Kim Bradshaw said.

Fort Lewis’ cafeteria ladies – these days called school nutrition service crews – are working out of nearby Glenvar Elementary School’s cafeteria to prepare students’ breakfast and lunch, she said, and will transport hot meals as soon as possible.

According to Roanoke County Schools’ spokesman Chuck Lionberger, the repairs are expected to take from several weeks to several months. “It’s in the hands of the insurance company now,” he said Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, students, teachers and staff are making the best of the situation. Although the gym was not damaged, demolition and construction makes it unsafe to have the children in the gym, so students do physical education in their classrooms.

Fifth graders are also back in their classrooms, after some damaged ceiling tiles were replaced when the students were not in the building, Bradshaw said.

Roanoke County School Superintendent Dr. Lorraine Lange reassured parents, students and staff that the Fort Lewis school building is safe. “The Roanoke County Building Commissioner and the Fire Marshal have reviewed the building and determined it is safe,” she explained.

Plywood temporary walls have been built off the hallway leading to the exterior doors closest to the cafeteria, and students walk through the passage to get to and from school buses.

Record snow immobilizes Salem, brings out people’s best

Meg Hibbert — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:38:24 +0000

SALEM – Between 16 and 20 inches of snow fell on the mountains and valleys of Salem and the Roanoke Valley over the weekend, snarling traffic, causing some drivers to abandon their vehicles and walk, and bringing pre-Christmas shopping to a standstill.

But the storm that weather forecasters called a record this early in December for the Roanoke Valley also brought out the best in people.

Drivers in four-wheel vehicles pushed motorists out of snowbanks, helped them shovel out their cars and paths from their driveways in the Beverly Heights neighborhood, for instance, and in general, showed the Christmas spirit.

Firefighters at the Fort Lewis Station in Glenvar rescued motorists stuck on I-81 for up to seven hours, and brought them back to the station for a hot meal and to spend the night.

Snow started falling 1 to inches an hour shortly after 2 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 18, and the snowfall kept up steadily through the night and most of Saturday.

Schools closed two hours early, and businesses rushed to close their doors that afternoon so employees could get home safely. Still, there were more accidents than could be counted in the fast-falling snow, and traffic backups all over Salem and on I-81.

There were numerous reports of people with blades on their trucks or even on four-wheelers who pushed out people’s driveways for free, went for groceries for people who couldn’t get out and helped in numerous other ways.

Sixty people spent the night in the Fort Lewis Fire Station, finding sleeping space wherever they could: on sofas in the day room, on the floor, and firefighters bedding down on top of the hose beds, they said.

One family who had been traveling through with the idea of beating the storm slept in the back of an ambulance. Another woman traveling with her Labrador retriever said she slept in her pet’s dog bed.

The Alonzo Stagg Bowl football championship, which was to have started at 11 a.m., began at 4 p.m. instead. Salem is a sports city and wouldn’t stop for snow.

But people did. While children who could get there happily sledded down the hills at Longwood Park in Salem or made snow people in their own front yards and those of neighbors, most people wisely stayed put.

“This snow was hard on people, hard on the animals,” said Craig County Circuit Court Clerk deputy clerk Sharon Braden, who is also a dispatcher for the City of Salem’s 911 system. She has eight horses, six of them on her 15 acres and some neighbors’ pasture near New Castle.

Her horses were up to their shoulders in the snow, she reported.

In the Johns Creek area, Tracy Roberts reported her horses were in 23 inches of snow on her farm.

“We’re out of practice for big snowfalls. When we were little we used to have big snowfalls like this when the snow would be bigger than we were,” Braden added. “We’ve not had to deal with it in a long time. My daddy taught us to be prepared. We’ve gotten out of the habit.

Craig County Schools closed for the day Friday, because of the forecast. Salem students subsequently started their winter break early, since schools did not reopen on Monday and Tuesday. The break was to have started Wednesday, Dec. 23.

Record snow immobilizes Craig

Meg Hibbert — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:54:56 +0000

CRAIG COUNTY – Between 17 and 23 inches of snow fell on the mountains and valleys of Craig County over the weekend, snarling traffic, causing some drivers to abandon their vehicles and walk, and bringing pre-Christmas shopping to a standstill.

But the storm that weather forecasters called a record this early in December for the Roanoke Valley also brought out the best in people.
Drivers in four-wheel vehicles pushed motorists out of snowbanks, helped them shovel out their cars and paths from their driveways and in general, showed the Christmas spirit.

Snow started falling 1 inch per hour shortly after 2 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 18, and the snowfall kept up steadily through the night and most of Saturday.

Farmers such as Jay Day who had heavy equipment pushed out paths for their neighbors to be able to get from Little Cuba to roads into New Castle, for instance.

Backups on I-81 stranded motorists in their cars for up to seven hours at a time, and the Fort Lewis Fire Department in Roanoke County opened the crew hall as a temporary overnight shelter for about 60 people.

Craig County Sheriff’s Deputies transported several people home who were stranded, and pushed several vehicles out of the ditches on Rt. 311 on Potts Mountain, said the deputies, who didn’t want any credit by name.

“This snow was hard on people, hard on the animals,” said Craig County Circuit Court Clerk deputy clerk Sharon Braden, who has eight horses, six of them on her 15 acres and some neighbors’ pasture near New Castle. Her horses were up to their shoulders in the snow, she reported.