First Person: Blizzard of '13 Lives Up to the Hype

Yahoo! News is gathering brief first-person accounts, photos and video from the severe winter weather in the northeastern United States. Here's one resident's story.

FIRST PERSON | It looks like all the warnings about Winter Storm Nemo have paid off. The blizzard plowed through Connecticut last night, delivering high winds and dumping more than two feet of snow.

This morning we are still experiencing heavy snowfall, though forecasters expect that to taper off around 10 a.m. Norwich has about 23 inches of snow at the moment. Snow banks in our front yard have easily reached waist-high. We had to shovel the snow outside our front door twice in the middle of the night just to prevent us from becoming trapped inside.

A blanket of about three inches of snow covers all the roads to our neighborhood; it's clear that the plows have not come through for some time. The storm became so bad last night that state and city plow trucks were pulled off the roads; they are now back in action. Not only is traveling impractical, but it's also impossible. Even so, Gov. Dan Malloy ordered that all roads be closed until further notice to prevent optimistic drivers from getting stuck in the snow.

Though Connecticut Light & Power reports about 36,000 of its customers without power, here in Norwich, the Norwich Public Utilities is only reporting sporadic outages, with about 160 customers out of power. We thankfully experienced no power outages during the storm.

It looks as though this weekend will be spent digging ourselves out of the massive amount of snow we have and drinking lots and lots of hot chocolate to stay warm.