Some Images From The Blizzard

The snow finally got going after 9:30 pm on Saturday night. The snowfall was incredibly intense overnight and we woke to almost two feet of accumulation. It's probably a good thing that this amount of snow fell during the wee hours and not during the day when everyone would have been out on the road. The road conditions are still not great especially on secondary roads two days later.

This storm posed a series of challenges that I had not foreseen, but all in all we were pretty well prepared. I was even able to get in a little Christmas shopping on Saturday. I prepared the snow blower, changed the oil, filled the tank with fresh gas and parked it in the barn for easy access and a straight shot to the driveway which is a plus after even a little snowfall.

I thoroughly enjoy a good snow storm, particularly when I am well prepared. I like to watch it fall, enjoy using the snow blower and getting the animals dug out and watch them experience it. I also really enjoy playing in the snow, and what I mean by that is I want to be out on my snowshoes (and I would like to get a new set of cross-country skis at some point). I recall a few trips out on my snowshoes in the Adirondacks. There is a different kind of peace in the woods in winter, particularly when it's really cold. Just the sounds of your breathing, the shoes in the snow, the occasional chickadee or golden-crowned kinglet. The colder, the better.

My snowshoes are wooden with rawhide webbing and I have had them for about twenty years or so. They were really in rough shape, so a couple years ago I sent them off to a guy in Vermont who dipped them and sent them back looking as beautiful as ever. I never bothered putting the bindings on so they have been in the basement ever since, looking shiny and new with no purpose. Saturday night I reinstalled the bindings with the hope of getting out on them, but if for nothing else to have them in case I needed to get somewhere.

When these things happen at home there is usually something to do after getting the snow cleared away. I was scheduled to work at the kennel Sunday. After moving a lot of the snow out of the driveway with the snow blower, I finally was able to get out to work. The 4Runner did extremely well in the snow. Our road had been plowed overnight, but I think the crews gave up and were waiting for the majority of the storm to be over. I stopped at one of the employees homes to pick her up and we finally arrived a little after 9:30. Our plow guy had not arrived yet, so we had to leave the car in the road with the flashers going and dig out enough of the snow to be able to plow through it with the 4Runner. Once inside we went to work and did what we could. The outside kennels were full of snow all of which had to be moved by hand as the old snow blower we used to use would not start on my test run on Saturday. It finally occurred to me that we had not placed the driveway markers this fall for the plow guy. Luckily he also does our lawn care so he knows the property well. I had cleared a bit of the snow along some landscape ties, but other then that it was not necessary to dig anymore.

Based on taking measurements and the amount of snow that fell in the afternoon we easily had 24 to 27 inches of snow. A lot for the Cape and one of the biggest accumulations I have seen here in 35 years.





A couple shots along the route to work.

This is a shot of bamboo that always comes down in a heavy snow. The tops of the plants are on the center line of the road.

A shot of what we faced in the kennel compound.

The 4Runner at the kennel after the plow guy came.

Once we got the dogs taken care of and settled in we headed home for lunch at around 1:30. I dropped off my fellow employee and we decided that I could handle the rest of the day by myself and there was no need for her to come back.

Before I went inside I gave Guapo some lunch and took a few shots around the property.



The car and the camper.

Back of the house taken from inside the barn.

The chicken coop. It was so dark in there from the windows being blocked I think they slept on the roosts all day.

Logan was supposed to go in for surgery today. He has numerous lumps and bumps; enough so that now it's worth knocking him out to have them removed. I wanted to have his teeth cleaned while he was out as well. We marked all of his bumps with a blue Sharpie marker and I headed off to the vet. The plan was for me to drop him off then get home so that Mrs. could take the 4Runner to run a few errands while I continued with the snow removal at the house. After that we would be heading over to her Mom's to extricate her from her house. In past winters I would load the snow blower into the pickup to get her out, but with no truck now, we would be hand shoveling.

When I arrived at the vet they had discovered some sort of problem with the electrical system in the building. I reappointed and brought Logan home, blue marks and all.

While Mrs was out I started the snow blower again and got to work on the rest of the driveway and getting the car dug out. Not long after getting into it the blower started acting up and eventually became unusable. The forward gears stopped functioning completely and in fact the machine would only go in reverse. I parked it in the barn (after a few choice words) and continued on with the shovel. I got the car out and Mrs arrived home. As we were about to leave I noticed the town had come through and plowed again which left another pile of snow at the end of the driveway. I could easily have driven over it but I did not want to pack it down. I grabbed a shovel and started moving the pile. I heard a car driving by and then someone tooted the horn. I recognized one of my long-time neighbors behind the wheel of a nice Chevy pickup with a big, red plow on the front. He motioned for me to get out of the way and made quick work of the pile.

We had discussed the night before trying to find a company to plow my mother-in-law's driveway, but I decided we would have a tough time finding someone. Mrs did look up the number to a big, local landscape company and went so far as to call the number. No answer, of course, but a cell phone number for plowing was provided. Still, I insisted we not do that.

We arrived to the usual large mound of snow at the end of her driveway and to our amazement a truck belonging to the very landscape company we looked up the night before was parked in front of the house across the street with a crew working on the neighbors long driveway. Mrs asked the guy about maybe doing the driveway for us, but he informed us his truck was broken down.

We started shoveling when another truck showed up. The driver gave us a quote, we grabbed a check from my mother in law (we didn't have enough cash) and he made quick work of the driveway.

I have no idea how much time and pain this saved us, but it was in fact significant. We dug out her short walkway and were on our way home.

This gave me a little more time to work at home. I shoveled out the chicken coop so the poor beasts could get outside.



Guapo loves the snow.
I shoveled out one more walkway and then headed inside for lunch and to get ready for work. All in all, not a bad time. This post became a little longer than it probably should have. For more images from the storm check out the set at my Flickr site.