Elbow deep yet again

kw: observations, weather

If the weather reports are to be believed, this will be me tomorrow evening or the next morning. For the Philadelphia area and points south, "at least 12 inches…" The rest of the winter belt, and some places that see snow once a decade, have had their turn recently; now it is ours.

I am getting too old for this. The year we moved here there was a nor-easter that dropped two+ feet overnight. I went out every couple hours and shoveled another 6-8 inches. But I was a mere child of 48 then. Got a few new creaky joints now.

Although its winters are twenty degrees colder than here, I liked South Dakota winters better. Yeah, we occasionally got a 6- to 10-inch snowfall in April or even November, but most winters it would snow about an inch, very powdery snow, and then blow it about for a couple of weeks before a short thaw made it vanish. Three of those was a winter, because at -10°F (-23°C) or colder it was too cold to snow much. Snow in the Dakotas is a sediment; you pack it down and drive or walk on it.

By contrast, my grade school years in Utah, when it snowed, we often got buried. Two feet was ordinary, and four not unusual. The storms were always windy, so drifts to the eaves were common. We didn't bother to roll up snowmen. We just picked a likely-sized drift and carved out a snowman - or a dinosaur.

We also tried out making rolling plows like this from boards and parts of old wagons. I can tell you with confidence, it is very tricky to plow with one of these. If you let the blade drag more than a tiny bit, it catches on a seam in the concrete, and you wind up doubled-up over the handle with the air knocked out of you (of course we ran; the less time spent plowing, the more time spent sledding. We lived alongside a hill).

So for tomorrow's snowfall, I'm packing in the Advil and a tureen of hot cider.