We’re under a blizzard warning and asked to stay off the roads…the city services have got all they can handle.
Jane says the snow-viewing lantern looks like a Russian onion dome. We have about 5″ down so far and it’s still coming. We were going to skate today, but it looks as if we’d better rig up our little snowblower and get at it before it freezes. We’re going to have snow all week, temperatures as low as -13 at night, highs of 10, and then, this weekend, we have one warmer day and it could rain atop all this, which will create an ice topping on all this.
YIKES! I hope you are/were not planning any major driving in the near future. We are just the opposite here in southern New England. Temps are mid 40’s-50’s will continue through the week end. It’s true Indian Summer.
Take care……. 😉
Hmm, is it serendipity that I’m reading Rusalka right now?? 🙂
Hi! I am now drafting in MS Weird because the great mysterious web and IE8 have mutually blasted my prior notes off into the “cannot display page” ether. What fun. One believes that you and Jane have spare keystones that could turn your extreme weather into your very own front yard skating rink 😉
Over here in Pugetopolis, we have not been spared from this same storm system. Local lore has it that one snowflake is a major storm, two constitute a severe winter event, and three snowflakes are nothing less than a blizzard! Be that as it may, I can say from two hours out in the storm last night waiting for any of the many buses that Metro had deftly inserted into previously reported 0 mph traffic jams, that all we lacked for a veritable blizzard was a few more inches of powder and another 5 or 10 mph wind speed. To make a long story short, over a period when I should have seen 8 buses going in each direction, there were none, zero, zip. Since I had ridden & bused my bike to work and my route homeward was into the teeth of the wind, I gave up, bought dinner & treated myself to a night of solitaire interspersed with unsuccessful naps on the floor of my cubicle. My boss, who has a heart of gold for today at least, has given me a tomorrow off as a comp day because I was here overnight, even though there wasn’t anything that actually needed doing. Many, many, hopes that your share of the front is not so unkind.
Oy! Adventures!
Well, I rashly promised Jane that *I’d* do the snow-shoveling this storm…(actually, I kind of sneaked out and did it, because Jane strained her back on the prior shoveling) and this storm is over half a foot deep: we are not counting the somewhat deeper drifts.
I can tell you the relatively inexpensive electric Toro snowblower is a little tiger: it’s performed where it is literally over its top in snow. I went out and over the course of an hour did a double drive, about 25 feet long, including out into the street so the snowplows can see there’s a drive and lift the blade a second; and the garage to the house, about 30 feet. Now, I’d already done a job getting the snowblower down from the wall where we’d hung it…quite a trick, with all the stuff piled up; and getting two new cords deployed (cold and stiff ones).
So now I decide to go around to the front, and Jane has already (and properly) objected to taking the snowblower through the house: so I cleared the garden gate and carried it around, in snow shin-deep, and on to the front walk, then went back after the cord.
Here’s where it got interesting — *finding* the front walk, which is serpentine: and I managed it, to the point where I need to veer away from the walk and over to the side of the lawn, where we have a ramp, which is how we get the trash out to the curb: steps are not good in the ice.
So I managed it, over uneven dirt, with the little wheels freezing up and needing to be cleared about every 8 feet. The whole front walk is about 30 to 40 feet, and then 15′ to the side and another ten down the ramp to the street. But I did it, uphill on the last push.
By then I was soaked in thrown snow and sweating simultaneously, and struggled with the blower *back* around the house and to the back door, where I decided the better part of valor was to go in and catch my breath and have a cup of coffee. This was where Jane figured out what I’d been doing…
Well, I had to go to the store and get OUR Thanksgiving dinner, which is going to skip the turkey and trimmings and go straight for diet-busting coconut cream pie and carrot cake!—and bubbly!—and I did that, while hauling the snowblower into the mud room, and then waited till I got back to pick up the cord, which is now thawing in the living room.
It stopped snowing while I got to the store. And has started again.
The ancestral homestead in OH has a quarter mile long driveway. After the first major snowfall, staying on the drive requires using the Force. Fortunately, my dad hit on the simple expedient of putting 2′ tall stakes along one side of the driveway before the first snow. Once the snowplow has made its initial run, the banks on either side are an adequate guide.
Ladies, take care! I’ve just been reading about the huge storm up there. I live in Western NY, where we know snow. Cold expected for Thursday, possible snow showers but nothing much. We’ll get ours, though, soon enough.
Do be careful when shoveling, it’s good exercise but very strenuous. Happy Thanksgiving!!
Yep: I do a strenuous sport, but it’s nothing like hand-carrying a snowblower through heavy snow!
Huh. We have a front coming, now forecast to hit on Thanksgiving Day and drop the temp around 30° as it passes. But tomorrow, they’re saying 80°! Yesterday was about that too; today a little cool front moved through, stalled out, and is going to drift back north as a warm front tomorrow before the arctic one arrives with our first real freeze of the season. Hard to comprehend the kind of snow you’re getting.
We have had a couple of very rainy spells this fall, and mild temps, so a lot of flowers are re-blooming after the August dormant period of 100+° and no rain. Lots of roses to be soon around town, and the scarlet sage in my yard is working hard. The bees love it. I see lots of leg-baskets of dark orange pollen going into the hive.
My most physically taxing adventure recently actually involved a great deal of standing still, as I worked out how to attempt to place my feet to maneuver my way out of the briar-patch I incautiously became entangled in. It was an hour’s exercise in slow-motion precision and balance. http://naturalist-amm.blogspot.com/2010/11/brer-rabbit-im-not.html
oops, roses are SEEN around town (but SOON to be gone)
Just a dusting of snow on this side of the pond. Stably below freezing, though. At 20°F or so. (Silly Fahrenheit scale, freezing is at 0 degrees)
“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Just started to rain here. It sounds like it is quite heavy.
We have far less than in town: only ~4-5″. I didn’t leave the office until 6:30 pm tonight. Everyone then was moving nicely; no problems despite snow & some ice.
The temp at our place now? 2 below.
*finding* the front walk, which is serpentine:
You need some of those tall snow poles that they install on mountain highways so they can find them to plow… 🙂
Snow poles: a good idea!