Blizzard in April

I mentioned in my last post that we had several more inches of snow predicted for the following weekend. We got that, all right, and then some. It became a full-fledged, record-setting blizzard... on the 14th of April! We got around 18 inches, with wind gusting up to 50 mph. Ugh.

I'm posting these photos just for posterity. It's not like I'll ever want to look back and see them myself. As a matter of fact, I'd be quite content to never see snow again! 

The mini lilac bush in front of the house:

The backyard got more snow than we've ever had there before!

The top of the drifts were higher than the bottoms of the kitchen windows!

Grandpa finally gave up with his snowblower and got the tractor and loader out to push the snow out of the way so he could get out of here.

Such fun. NOT. The good news, however, is that it's been melting very fast. We still have some left, but here's a comparison from yesterday.

That's it. Enough reminders. It's spring now, hopefully to stay. The birds, who've had a really tough time the last couple of months, are busy singing and nest-building, and the rhubarb is peeking out. Hopefully the farmers can get into the fields in a week or so, which is very late, but better late than never, right?

Enough. The end.

Daddy

This is Daddy's nearly-full-time job this winter. And he'll be at it again soon, as today we have a south wind filling in everything he so carefully cleaned out on Tuesday, the day I took the video. Then this weekend, it'll all get filled in again from the northwest, with maybe a little new snow added to it. Aargh.

He's really good at driving backwards, but I think his boss(es) ought to get him a front-mounted snowblower to save on his neck. ;-)

Well, it's warmer now, but....

It actually got to 24° ABOVE zero today! But... warming up takes its toll, too. Yeah, that ol' south wind blew all night and filled in what Nate had cleared off so nicely on Friday. He got stuck with the pickup on his road this morning, and Grandpa barely made it out of here to go help him. Here's a shot of our driveway after he'd made it out. The snow was packed really hard, so getting through there was tough. You go fast and hope you make it. (And the pic doesn't do it justice.)

Like I said, the snow was packed hard. Notice my tracks going on top of the drift directly in front of the open door. I hardly sunk in at all.

That new drift in front of the garage was a bit much for my little electric snowblower, so I left it for the big guy.

Here's the tundra. See the snow still blowing across the road down past the intersection?

What's this... another blizzard on the way? Nope, just Nate clearing the yard... AGAIN.

Someone suggested in the comments that I show you what the snowblower looks like. Well, I didn't think Nate would appreciate stopping for a photo shoot, nor did I want to get full of snow to get a pic while he was blowing, so this is the best I could do. The window was rather foggy, so the video's not very clear, but it watch to the end and you'll get a pretty good view of what it looks like while it's going.

So, the yard is cleaned out again... till the next time. And it's relatively warm out now, and the winds have settled down. The daylight ended not only peacefully but colorfully!

(Click any photo to enlarge.)

Snow removal, part 2

This is how Courtney's daddy does it:

Above he's blowing a path to my trash barrel. After that he granted my unspoken wish and blew a path from the middle of the yard to our back door so we didn't have to keep going out the front and all the way around to get to the machine shed, etc.

Of course it wasn't too many days before the wind came up and nearly filled it all in again.

And it snowed all day long again today, covering everything with another 6+ inches. Later tonight the wind's supposed to come up and blow it all over the place. We're in a winter storm warning again. With all the fresh powdery snow, it'll make for whiteout conditions, and no doubt schools, etc., will be closed again. And the temps. are going to plummet.

And then later Courtney and Daddy will have to come back and do their cleaning all over again!