Making a mountain

kw: weather

The official total in my yard is 21 inches (53 cm).

I shoveled three times. First, beginning just about midnight this morning, when six inches (15 cm) had fallen. I didn't clear the area where the cars were parked. What I did do took 45 minutes. I slept well.

Just after arising, I began to shovel snow about 7am. Another 10" (25 cm) had fallen. The wind was blowing fiercely, and making drifts where I'd piled snow before. Even with my wife helping, we spent nearly two hours clearing the area I'd cleared the night before. Then we went in for a big breakfast.

After taking some ibuprofen, I turned in for some more sleep, and got about three hours! About 3pm we noticed the snow was slackening, and by 4pm it had stopped. I went back out and cleared the final five inches (13 cm) in about 45 minutes. Then we tackled the car park, which took us another two hours! The drifts, sweeping off the cars, carrying snow to increasingly remote places…by the time we were done, there was not just one big hill, but a ridge of six-foot (1.8 m) mini-mountains all along the driveway, and a couple more between the cars and the back fence.

Just before starting the 4pm shoveling session, I took this picture of the snow on our trash container in the back yard.

In the past, I've used the bird bath as a snow gauge. It was so nearly totally buried, I figured this one is better this time.

After taking that picture, passing through the kitchen I took this one also. All the lower windows of the house have snow stuck in the screens.

Although it looks like snow drifted up to the mid-window level, from outside it is actually seen to be a narrow pile on the window ledge. The weather bureau rates this the second largest snowfall on record for this area. The first was in the blizzard of 1996, which was just a few months after we moved here. I hope the record holds for a long, long time!

More ibuprofen, and more sleep, for me!