More snow today, and a Weather Advisory

  More snow today, another nine inches of very light fluffy snow added to the thirty or so we have on the ground now.  This was much easier to snow blow and to shovel than the Friday storm.  Seems I've been shoveling and blowing and roof raking snow for days, three days actually, Friday evening, Saturday and today Sunday...  Now I see a Weather Advisory posted calling for Ice 5-10am on Monday.

The good news is we got the snow blower out of it's Icy grip, (The rock salt did the trick)  so that we're in much better shape from a snow removal standpoint.

There should be a law against this much snow (at my house anyway).  I'm thinking we're going to be in serious trouble this spring once the spring melt starts.  I read online today that Ottawa, Ontario is already dynamiting it's ice dams on the rivers trying to get them broken up and moving.

The Barn roof is sporting at least 36" and the workshop 24"+, the workshop roof is relatively easy to clear, we light a good hot fire in the wood stove there and several hours later all of the snow will simply slide off.  The Barn however is another story, the last time Jarrod and I shoveled the barn roof it took 4-5 hours to clear it, not an endeavor to be taken lightly.

Assembled the new roof rake today.

No Pics today, we dropped off the rental car at the airport and promptly got to work on clearing some of this white stuff.

Reading online where folks down south are already planting and planning out their gardens...  I can only wish and turn the page on the seed catalog.

 

What a day! Someone, somewhere, is laughing, I'm sure of it!

What a day... Friday was...

Woke up at 5:30am in Ottawa Canada yesterday to a nice fairly clear day in the 30s, packed up my hotel room, checked out by 6:30am hitting the road before 7am.  I was told to be on the 417 highway towards Cornwall before 7am or expect major delays, and worse if it was snowing at that time. That turned out to be a very good call although completely full at 7am the 417 kept flowing the entire way through Ottawa. (The last time I drove the 417 at 8am I sat in traffic stopped for more than 1/2 hour before finally giving up deciding to drive south on the 416 to Ogdensburg NY instead, more than an hour the wrong way.) 


So back to the drive..., clear dry road, full tank of gas, this wouldn't be so bad, maybe I would beat the storm. The storm held off until I hit the Canadian border and across the first half of NY all I'd see were mostly flurries.


The drive across northern NY was pretty uneventful, beautiful farm country, my kind of towns, though obviously economically depressed in many areas, I'd like to buy some property here.


Vermont mountains would be the far more formidable task as I drive across the entire state diagonally in a southeasterly direction across I89 driving through mostly unplowed 4-6" of heavy wheel sucking mush ruts that temped you to look away for just a second that would see you quickly into the guardrail or worse the thirty foot median drop off between the South lane I was in and the North lanes across the median. Many drivers did look away for just a moment, and quickly succumbed to the storm and found themselves off the road facing the wrong direction a casualty of the storm stuck, and depressed, waiting for some one to come along to hopefully pull them out.  I don't know how they get the cars out of the median that have skidded 40 feet down the snow covered embankments.  Six, ten, fifteen accidents later I had slowed to a 40 mph crawl through the mountains.Tractor trailer trucks were having a tough time getting up the hills, and passing a snow plow with their dual bladed deployed was death defying, as was passing a tractor trailer as they waggled up the hills with their flashers on.   I remember thinking "jeez, don't they have snowplows in Vermont?"  I wouldn't see a plow until more than halfway across the state.


I drove to the 3rd rest stop through Vermont, as I hit the ramp at 40 mph or so I quickly realized that the tractor trailer in front of me wasn't moving but was stopped halfway down the ramp in front of me,  "Oh crap" and hit the breaks on the rental which thankfully stopped just in time.  As it turns out there were 3 tractor trailers stopped dead in the heavy wet unplowed snow of the rest stop.  I decided to go for it and was able to squeeze between the tractor trailers and a drop off and get to the car section of the parking lot.  Everyone in the stop was talking about how bad the storm was.  I like driving in the snow and for most of the trip was in the passing lane, I was however driving with both hands on the wheel, unusual for me other than in weather like this. 


I drove white knuckled for ten hours through a pretty bad snowstorm, drove for miles without touching my ipod for fear that I too would end up in one of those ditches, I drove without looking around other than in one or two spots where I dared to take a peek at the beautiful Vermont countryside in the snow. My drive across NH was fairly uneventful.


So I made it home, ten hours later to an absolute mess, apparently my day wasn't over. Twenty plus inches of very heavy solid mess met me at the end of the driveway.  I parked the car with flashers on in the road and trudged up the house to drop off my notebook with Rose and headed right over to the snow blower, pulling the tarp off I fell down forgetting that under the 10 inches of heavy wet snow there was sheer smooth Ice, I apparently forgot two more times as I found myself horizontal two more times just getting the tarp off the machine.  I went to pull the blower back to get it to a semi clear area to start it and found that the front was frozen to the ground, not just frozen a little, oh no it had melted nearly to the center of the earth (OK, maybe not quite to the center) and refroze solid more than two inches deep into the ice... It wasn't moving. "You have got to be kidding me",  oh, but wait, it gets better.  I trudged, (in this kind of snow trudging is all you can do) down to the barn to get the bag of Salt Ice Melt I saw just inside the barn before I'd left for Canada.  Picking the bag up realized it was a solid 20 pound brick of salt left over from last year, Hoisted it up and slammed it down on the concrete floor of the barn to break it up good, my first effort broke it up pretty good so of course I had to slam it on the other side to get all the salt broken up.  This of course split the bag open for ten inches dumping a bunch of the rock salt on the floor, I picked up the torn bag as best I could and trudged up to attempt to free the snow blower from it's icy grip.  Dumping 5 lbs or so all around the blades, and side runners.  Two hours later I would check it and it was still stuck solid.

Getting the car off the road...


Into the barn, I knew my favorite bent handled shovel was there (yes I have a favorite shovel) you would too if you saw as much of your shovel as I do mine. It's in the barn, it does double duty as I use it to shovel stalls too. I pulled on the barn door handle and the 12" metal roof above the door caught the top of the door and dumped 10 inches of snow on my head, pulling again, it was stuck on the door, I cleared the snow off the roof and the door opened the door went into the barn I said "hi ladies" to the chickens, Willow and bunny, I gave Willow a treat, grabbed the shovel and went to leave by the side door, I unlocked the inside hook, however the door wouldn't budge of course it was also locked from the outside so I went around and met Rose in the driveway. 


Rose started again shoveling the berm my plow guy left by the barn where we park the cars earlier and had given up the snow was so heavy.  I shoveled a path at the end of the driveway through the town plow snow berm just wide just enough to get the car through, only to get in the car to see the town plow coming down the street to  fill in what I just spend 15 minutes shoveling out, (talk about angry, blind rage in probably closer to the truth) at this point), I started shoveling again then slammed the rental through what was left of the berm, I had made it into the driveway through the five inches of heavy unplowed snow in it, my plow guy had been through earlier obviously but hadn't come back since.  He usually shows up to make the second pass just before the I normally get home about six pm or so, of course I got here at 5:30pm so he hadn't returned yet. Rose had shoveled the berm and I somehow managed to not get stuck in the driveway and onto the hill, I parked the rental on the hill in 6+ inches of snow. Tomorrow should be interesting...


That evening 7pm,  still no plow guy, Rose had half a mind to call him now, but thought better of it as he really has been an awesome plow guy all of these last probably 8 years, we'd have to call him in the morning if we weren't plowed by then.  I figured his truck probably broke in the storm, this was one of the worst snows, heavy wet, and stuck to everything, including plow blades, I was sure reeking havoc on the hydraulics.


In the house for a bit to just sit down and grab a bite to eat, then back to the the barn to bring water down to Willow.  No TV as the satellite was out probably due to the accumulation of snow on the dish along with the cloud and snow cover, it was still coming down good.  I decided that I'd better roof rake the house because Accuweather on my computer said it was going to freeze solid in cooler temps tomorrow.  We'd purchased a new roof rake as our old trusty one after seven or so years of use had cracked.  I trudged down to the van where we'd left the new one before I left to get it out and of course the van was locked. At this point probably should have guessed that, on my way back to the house Rose had realized my dilemma and used her key fob to unlock it for me.  I got the side door opened, and started pulling the pieces of the roof rake out of the box somehow managing to not break a window in the van.  They just kept coming, big pieces, and bags of little parts...  No way I thought in my current (we'll just call it irritated, or maybe borderline irrational) state would I attempt to put all these together gloved.  I somehow managed to keep all of the parts that sprinkled out on the van carpet in the van. (One for me...) I closed the van and decided that with some duct tape and a couple zip ties I could make the old roof rake usable again.  I was victorious I thought as I cleared the first side of the house then the second roof when the aluminum handle broke, metal fatigue, the hole that kept the snap together pieces linked tore out, so now my twenty four foot roof rake was a mere 16 foot long meaning I could only do the lower roofs and hope for the best on the higher peaks.


As I turned to go back in the house I heard the big pines out back in the far corner of the field breaking, I watched as several large pine branches cracked and broke under the weight of the snow, they crashed down releasing the snow from the lower branches on their way to the ground with a thud.  Great, I thought, all we need now is to lose power (I probably shouldn't have voiced that even in my head after the evening I just had) and my day would be complete. (we didn't lose power, thankfully)


It's 7:30pm, and I'm off to bed, beaten, bruised and somewhat humbled by the storm!  I have a lot of work to do tomorrow.


Tomorrow would be a better day,  I'm sure of it.

Interesting video, Frazile Ice in Yosemite National Park

Interesting video, Frazile Ice in Yosemite National Park...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v...vq=medium#t=15

Love It!!!

Love It!!!: "You really need to be from the Northeast to fully appreciate this:



'...screamin' go back to Taxachusetts' - I think I spit out my coffee on that one...

That is all.

"

Ice Dams

Ice dams are taking their toll on a lot of homes around town. We went for a drive to Nashua today, and found it common to see 10-12" of ice sitting at the edge of roofs in the area.  A lot of people out trying to chop through the ice and still more shoveling the 10-24" of snow off their roof.  So far we're doing ok, and most of our ice dams melted off the one or two warm days last week.

Gordo

Gordon "Gordo" is getting big , ok, big for him, he's enjoying the snow as long as it's snowblowed...

Sittin' with Papa

I got home late one night last week, James decided to climb up and sit and chat with Papa while I ate dinner. Good times!

Computer Geeks

The boys were over last week with their computers.

Jason with his Leapster





James with his Leap Pad

Harley's Mountain

Harley... sitting on Top of his mountain of snow in the front yard. The cold just doesn't seem to bother this one. You can usually find him sitting up on his mountain of snow with an Icicle in his mouth, he and Gordon have decided this week that the shrubs around here need a trimming, so they have taken to breaking off any and all accessible branches. (And when I say accessible "everything is accessible" because we have 6+ foot piles of snow bringing them eye level with all of the shrubs around here.)

More???

Another 6 to 8 Inches is due on Saturday...

Not so bad here in NH

So "The" storm of 2011 has just about finished up here in Southern NH.  We had a good two feet on the ground and probably added another 14-16 inches on top of that the past two days.  I finished the once around and am heading out for round two clearing the cars, paths, and widening the walkways, etc.  Filled the bird feeders, and the roof is raked, I have concerns that if we don't get some melting soon we may have issues. (It's supposed to be 39 degrees F on Sunday I think)


Rose noticed that there were tracks in the snow going through the field over by the woodpile, and then over to the cove, judging from the 3-5 feet between tracks we had a Moose run through the yard overnight and a fairly big one at that. 

Saw this odd couple in the old Apple out back waiting out the storm. 
 

Snowmageddon! or maybe it's Snowpocalypse!

 Oh we're in it now,   6+ inches so far on Tuesday 2/1 and still coming down, and on Wednesday 2/2 we could be looking at an additional 24 inches.. of SNOW.    That's on top of the 24+ inches on the ground before today!

I'm thinking it'd be a great time to be in Florida!