The work required to keep the driveway and pathways open has been massive on behalf of Dear Hubby in Combo with Miss R a touch.. While we do have a snow blower, Dear Hubby loves to do it by hand and shovel.. each of the storms meant 20, 000 plus on the fit bit with over a hundred plus active minutes each day and there were multiple days and layers of storms, the drifts were brutal. Do you see the little grey commute car, the drift was as high as the car and it had to be dug out including under it.
Because we have such massive amount of land, those banks do not look near as big as they should in this photo, they are not having it as easy in the towns and cities, where they are in major clean up mode as they are running out of room on where to place the snow.
Officially we got just over 70 cm in a matter of days from the back to back storms or 2 and half feet of snow, which means that we just got side swiped by the storm as other areas got double or even triple that over the same time frame. Having said that for our local area, that was the most snow in the same time frame in the past 20 plus years so it feels like a lot.
It was the wind and drifting that made it a issue.. take a look at the back six foot fence line in the small pasture.. about a foot of fence post on some spots and less then six inches on others! Those drifting waves cut into the snow. Thankfully there is nothing out there to draw the horses to want to cut into that kind of snow, they are to be found at the hay feeder, the barn lean to or in front of the big barn taking advantage of the solar heating and the wind break.
The big dog yard is not a safe play zone as they can walk up and hope over the fence like its not even there! The little dog uses the shoveled pathways as her zoom zoom lol. The cats are in the house much more over the past week and or greet the humans in the barn snoozing in the beds that get extra warmth from the cat heat lamp area.
The weather has been amazing for winterfest coming into its 47th year and the canal skating, over 400 000 thousand folks have been out to the different events, the ice sculptures are always worth a stop as are the snow ones!
Otherwise its been a stay in and stay safe and warm, we lost power for a touch but not for long, we stayed off the roads following the orders that unless it was a emergency, to stay home and stay off them, others did not listen and we have upward of 70 car piles ups, on my last drive on the way home from a medical appointment with the snow and the drifting in the days leading up to the big storm, i watched as we came up from clear bare good road to a area that has bad drifting and while i slowed right now, as i drove carefully though this tricky spot, there were five vehicles that had slide out and were in the ditch, everyone waved me on and showed their phones, which was good but still i could not have stopped if i wanted to or i would have just joined them.
Many people were told to come into work and then reported having to turn around and head back home when stopped by four to six foot drifts, the crews worked their hours till they were maxed out and townships had to put out notices that they were shutting down for 8 hours in the night for mandatory rest before starting again at 4am.
We had a number of folks that got sick in their homes due to the wind and snow drifting covering their furnace vents and so on, and they didn’t know they needed to keep them clear and so they had carbon monoxide poisoning, thankfully no one died but over a dozen households needed medical help and treatment.
If you were in the storms path, i hope you came out the other side warm and safe with no issues, still we had to have a little fun with all the fluffy snow coming down..
Game NIGHTs!!!
So if you got caught in the snow, did you bring out the cards! The board games or the D&D night!
Just another Day on the Farm 