Snow finally hits the Northeast in 2012!

Well it finally happened...  The unthinkable...

The flakes started flying Wednesday afternoon and it's just now finishing up on Thursday evening.  The first snow of 2012, about 13 inches of it, not particularly heavy or wet but it was sticky.  A veritable winter freaking wonderland.  I'm so over winter what there was of it, I was sorta hoping for the winter that wasn't.  (almost got my wish too.)  I shoveled the path this morning fed the barn animals and off I went to work, roads were pretty good, even Rt. 93, I made it to work in about an hour and a quarter.  

I thought the commute home would be bad, but it wasn't much worse than normal, a couple of folks that just can't drive figure out how to drive in the snow (you may refer to them by another name...I know I do on occasion.)  Snowblow'd the driveway, barn paths, manure pile, the shed, and the dogs run around the house path along with roof raking the north side while Rosie cleared the cars off.  I'm done for the evening.

Oh yeah, I hear it's supposed to be SIXTY degrees next week... Take that Winter!

Birdhouse pictures I promised...  All from this morning.

Wood colored Birdhouses

The Ol' Apple

Day 5, We've got Power!

Life is good once again!

Rose made a call to PSNH (several actually, along with most of my neighbors who made 3+ calls each)  PSNH said that their automated outage system fails sometimes, they were unaware we had no power apparently. 

So this morning a white PSNH pickup shows up and talked to Rose after another call and went by all of my neighbors homes who were also running generators and asked if we'd checked our breaker box, (ahh, Yeah, we did)

He said that the system that they look at to tell them the street has power says we're up!  (Nope, sorry no power), he told Rose that as she was nice as she hadn't yelled at him or threatened him and that he'd surely get someone over here to get us power asap. 

Well at 5:30pm the CAVALRY ARRIVED!  Rose said an entire fleet of trucks pulled up Riverdale and as far as you could see up and down Riverdale Road was Yellow PSNH and PIKE (Tenn or NC) trucks.  After a short lived problem with an inoperable bucket that wouldn't go up they quickly swapped trucks had power down at the barn and the living room lit up in short order.

Thanks PSNH lineman! 

We appreciate your help in getting us back to normal!

You thought that was it huh? Nope.

So Rose called while I was driving home and said she had no water at the faucets and the pump wasn't running,  Odd I thought, so I had her go check the pump in the cellar and turn it off if it's running, and sure enough it was running dry... 

Oh no! I though maybe we'd lost the foot valve down in the well letting all the water drain back from the pump in the basement all the way back down into the well 200 feet+ away.  The thought of having to prime the line all the way back to the well was not a good one, dumping 32 or so gallons (yeah I did the math) of water into a Tee one gallon at a time was not something I wanted to do this evening.  I tried to get the pump to prime turning it on and off again several times to no avail.  I felt the pump it was warm but not hot, the expansion tank was completely empty.  Then I felt the brass check valve to the right of the pump and it was COLD.  Maybe, just maybe...  I got my adjustable wrench, opened the pump cap sloowly... dumped in 1/2 gallon of water and plugged her back up.  I turned on the pump to hear a familiar swoosh as the pump pulled water up from the well, the pressure gauge jumped to 25 lbs and stayed there though concerning me a bit, I had Rose open the kitchen faucet and the pressure began to climb one pound at a time up to 50 lbs after 10 minutes we were back in business, whew what a relief!

Day 4 no power...

And you? We are supposed to get power either Thursday or Friday afternoon. We're showering at Jarrod's house, we have a generator running so we have heat and lights so we're doing ok. We are hoping PSNH can pull this off. We definitely have the generator operation down pat usually a single pull. It'll deserve a break after this week!

SNOtober

Powerless still...

We're still powerless, local stations are pumping fuel now making it easier. We have heat and the freezers aren't going to thaw out so long as I can get fuel for the genny, so as long as it takes we're warm and toasty. I do think we're going to get the water pump connected to the granny and a propane water heater to replace the electric one we have now.

Nor'Easter Progressing in NH

We have  a solid 12" on the ground and no signs of it letting up.  Our lights flickered a couple times, we lost Satellite signal so Rose is watching the DVR movies I've been recording from the 31 days of Halloween (Nice feature of the DVR...).

I went outside 10 mins ago to take some pics, and it is very quiet out there, transformers are popping in the distance off to our East, trees are bent over to the breaking point you can hear them cracking.  It's not windy here, Mom said it was breezy in Merrimack earlier when we called. 

It'll be interesting to see what it looks like in the AM. 

Stay Warm!

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.