It's so cold here (Chicago northern suburbs) that they closed our offices and declared that only "business critical personnel" need to report to work. You'll know if you're considered "business critical" because your immediate supervisor will tell you. I'm not.
This is nuts. It's so cold out that, in the interest of public safety, they're telling people to just stay home. If your car breaks down, you could literally freeze to death while waiting for help.
Re: snow blowers. Absolute life saver. Shortly after buying the house, we got one. We had a little extra cash, so we went for a huge beast with separate motors powering the wheels and the augers, electric start, the works. Very nice machine, clears the driveway in minutes, but in general it was probably a mistake. I was talking to my co-worker, and some years back when his beast died, he got a small one. The only "must have" was the electric start. It's a lot easier to get the little guy out of the shed/garage and deal with in general. Obviously it takes more passes up and down the driveway, but as long as it can handle the crap at the end that the snow plows leave you, it'll get the job done. I need my son's help to get our beast out of the shed, it's so damned big, my back can't deal with it. And despite being self-propelled, it's still a wrestling match at the end of each pass just to turn the thing around. There is such thing as too much machine.