Epic Snow Storm

Snow on top of the cooker.

I would be remiss if I did not post something about the huge storm that passed through in the last few days.  I will be back on track with the Victorian Belsnickel project on Thursday.    This was a huge snowstorm.  It has been ten or eleven years since we have had such a large storm.  It began snowing about 10:00 am on Friday morning and snowed and/or sleeted until 11:00 pm. on Saturday night.  This was not a situation of gentle snow showers.  It snowed so hard that it was like a curtain of snow.  If this was rain, it would have been a downpour.  The snow did not let up for the entire time.

Snow above the license plate numbers on the cars.

Fortunately, it was more of a snow storm rather than an ice storm, so there were minimal power outages.  Thankfully, we did not lose power here.  Although some areas did lose power, most of it was restored fairly quickly.  The winds were high, sometimes gusting to fifty miles an hour.  Despite the high winds, there was not as much snow drift as you would expect.  The snow was a wet heavy snow, and once it hit the ground it tended to stay put.  We shoveled snow away from one door to make sure we had a clear exit, but it did pile on the front porch.  The kitchen door has an awning, so although snow drifted in there we were still able to open the door.

Drifted against the shed.

We passed the time indoors with a number of activities.  We read and played video games.  And baked.  Bill likes to bake, and being stuck indoors is a time when he gets busy with baking.  He made a batch of cinnamon buns.  The house was filled with the smell of yeast bread and cinnamon.  There really is nothing more perfect than that while watching a snow storm.

Snow on the deck ramp.

The back yard.

When we walked out to clean the cars and clear the walk and driveway, the snow was up past my knees.  I guess that people up north where they get lake effect snows would consider up whiners to be complaining about a couple of feet of snow, but it is a lot of snow for us.  Since a snow like that happens only about once every ten or fifteen years, very few of us are equipped to handle this volume of snow.  They have snow blowers.  We have only shovels.  And did we shovel.  The snow closest to the ground was covered by a thick layer of sleet, that permeated the snow beneath it and turned it into hard surface.  Over that there were many more inches of snow, that were easier to shovel.  It took a about two and a half hours to for my husband and I to clear the front porch, walkway, the cars, and the driveway along a section wide enough for us to back a car out.  That was so much work that we decided to leave the van and the ramp up to the kitchen for another day.

Cinnamon buns.

Cleaning off the cars was a lot of work too.  We do not have a covered carport or garage.  The cars just have to stay out in the snow.  When we moved to this area, we were looking for a house with an attached garage.  The Realtor sounded like we were asking for something weird when we said we wanted that.  It is true, the majority of homes here do not come with garages.  I don't know why.  If a home has a garage at all around here, it is generally a detached garage somewhere in the back.  Anyway, the home we ended up purchasing did not have any sort of garage, so here we were, trying to push nearly a foot and a half of snow off the tops of our cars while trying not to scratch the paint.  We are really tired.  However, the cars are ready for action.

The street has been plowed one car width wide.  If everyone is going in the same direction, I guess that will work.  I am not sure what happens if two cars end up facing each other.  There is a significant difference between the top of the snow and street level.  I guess someone has to back up until they reach an open driveway.  This is actually an improvement of a sort.  It used to be that they did not plow our neighborhood.  We live beyond what is called "the urban service area."  If it snowed, you were just out of luck until the snow melted.  We were fortunate that one of our neighbors owned a backhoe.  If the snow was really bad he would plow the street.  I guess enough people complained that they were paying taxes and not receiving services, because they finally started to plow the neighborhood, sort of.  In a situation like this, it is better to have one lane open than none.

I am not planning on going anywhere today. Nor will I go out tomorrow unless it is absolutely necessary.  I expect that my husband will have to go to work on Monday, but it could be a late opening as the roads will be icy.  I don't expect that the university will make a decision on that until tomorrow morning.  It is above freezing now, but the temperatures will be dropping into the mid-teens overnight.

For now, it is a case of "alls well that ends well."  I am hoping that temperatures will be warm enough that the snow will get out of here before the next system comes through.  It looks as if the next several days will be sunny and temperatures may be in the thirties to low forties.  It will be below freezing every night though, so it might take a while to get all the snow out of here.

I'll be back to blogging about my project on Thursday.