The massive flowering quince that shades my bedroom totally collapsed flat. The snowplows just threw up a three foot berm across our drive, and Jane has thrown her back out, not unrelated to shoveling, I fear, but it looks as if this storm is mine. As soon as it’s light I’m going to have to go out there and shovel a path—it makes the snowblower’s job easier, if it can get one half of its body free—and it’s deep, over a foot. The weight on our roof is getting a tad worrisome: it’s impressively thick. But I have got to get that berm penetrated before it freezes solid, or our little snowblower can’t do it. And that means a lot of kitting up and going out and a lot of coffee. I’m not short of mittens and gloves, but I sure wish I’d bought that other knit beret I saw the other day at Freddy Myers’. Mine will be sopped in one go with the snowblower, and it’s going to be a long, long day of working in the snow.
Last night, after snowing nonstop for hours and hours, it really did rain snowballs. It reminded me of the night I was on a plane making its third try at a landing in Halifax. Huge balls of snow, the size of your head, were coming past my window in the lights, and a thick coating of snow was breaking off the leading edge of the wing, and while the lady next to me was talking about her will and what she was leaving to her kids, I was thinking, “Y’know, I wonder how many people have seen snowballs fly like this and lived…”
It was like that last night. I was thinking, heck, a few hours of this and we’re going to be buried….but now we have a couple of days for snow to melt a bit during the day: it’ll get up to two degrees above freezing for a few hours—
But I don’t think we’re going skating today: I’m just going to kit up and shovel.
Good luck! Unfortunately, you are quite right about shoveling through that snow-plow berm across the drive way before it freezes solid. Heavy, water-laden snow is not light and fluffy the way it (sort of) looks!
I got it—at least a space wide enough to get the car out. I had to shovel 30 feet to the garage, then 30 feet to the berm (it was knee deep and heavier than old sin)…but I made it, and I cleared out about 8 feet of berm down to the pavement: my toss pile was getting so high I was unable to throw the heavy shovelfuls that far up, so I got inventive and began packing them around the sides like a tower. That’ll take a while to melt!
Our garage of course faces an arterial, where the plows are frequent—which is good news and bad news. Sometimes we have a really good guy who lifts his blade to miss the alleys and driveways along it, but often enough—it’s some NoDoz’d poor sod who’s been up since 2 am who at this point can’t see it coming or doesn’t care.
The next try: Jane went out and (against my protestations) shoveled the front and moved more berm. I got out and used the snowblower on the drive and the house-garage walk.
I’ll tell you this: my Toro electric snowTHROWer blows more snow than the 1-stage gasoline-driven monster snow BLOW-er my neighbor is pushing. Literally, more snow out the vent; and MY direction of blowing changes with two turns of a light crank. His change-of-direction requires an act of Congress. I’ve seen several of these big-horse blowers out and about, and there’s not that much coming out the vent. My job is done, my drive is free, and my cord is coiled, while my blower sits nicely along the wall in the mudroom, a one-hand effort to carry it back. We have plugs situated in the garage, in the mudroom, and in the living room to use out front, and the thing, of course, starts with a squeeze of the handle.
I asked myself was I crazy to go electric—but hey, I’m an sf person, and electric is the future, eh? So I went electric, and I am not in the least sorry. Give me an electric socket and I can clear anything that isn’t frozen solid!
On the other hand, once a berm does freeze solid, those metal blades on the big guys would start looking real good.
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If Boise weather is any indication, it’s a good day to stay home (and preferably inside). Driving to work this a.m. was Idiots on Ice as usual… I am continually amazed that so few people understand the laws of physics!
I remember when I was still living in OH during the winter, hearing a thunderstorm in the winter. There was something amazingly surreal about seeing big fluffy clots of snow coming down, followed by lightning and thunder…
You aren’t kidding! We live right above the S curve of a major arterial, and I sit and sip coffee in the morning, occasionally wincing as a whole lane of tail-lights flash red for some cause hidden by the house across the street and the hill we sit on…
Ah, thunder-snow. I have heard that in Oklahoma, never yet up here.
We are getting a little bit of melt today, and let me tell you, getting some weight off the roofs is a Good Thing!
Of course it will freeze tonight, and the S curve will be a mess: we may want to draw our curtains for the evening rush, just to keep from angsting…
We’ve had thunder and lightning during a bad snowstorm, on occasion. Light snow this morning except in the SW counties that always get hit badly – they were bogged down with heavier snow. I see that Europe is getting hit pretty hard with snow and cold. Isn’t this a little early in the season for them to get the Big Freeze?