First real winter storm

For the past couple of days, Alberta's weather (which was really nice until now) has taken a turn for the worst. Yes winter has arrived and it did it in a violent fashion.
Last Friday (the 27th of November) the drive home was close to hell. What normally takes 40-45 minutes, took me 3 hours. The roads were covered in Ice. Super slippery conditions. I have never seen this before. The moment you even thought about using your brakes your were sliding all over the place. Thank god I drive a stick! Those guys with automatics really are in for some serious trouble whenever it starts to snow.
On Friday (4th of December) the first real winter storm of the season swept by leaving behind some 20cm (and in other cases close to 50cm) of snow. Driving home from work on Friday was bad but not as bad as the Friday before. The roads were covered in ice and the wind blew snow allover the roads (which made the visibility very poor in some spots). Took me only 2 hours to get home... *sigh*
The storm was accompanied by some strong northern winds blowing the snow allover the place on Saturday. Temperatures have really plummeted. From around 5 degrees high (last Thursday) to -20 right now. Together with the wind chill this makes -33 for now (yes this is in Celcius). I tell you, that is cold! I walked around the neighborhood yesterday to make some shots for the blog and I was happy to be indoors again (after I was away for 15 minutes or so).
The house is doing really fine in these conditions. There is some snow shoveling involved to get in or out the garage though but that's it.

These are some shots of the mountains we are seeing from our living room. The car shot is after 2 hours of snow in Calgary. I forgot to take a picture when it was time to go home but the snow on top of the car was more then double. Next shot is the commute home on Friday. Hey where is that road anyway? And the last 2 shots are our neighborhoods' snow drifts (a.k.a. snow dunes). :)