Here are a few pictures from today. Unfortunately, it's hard to get an idea of deep the snow really is. But it was deep. For us, anyway. Another time I will show you many of the birds that visited us during the storm.
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| One of the lucky things about the storm was that the wind blew most of the snow off the tree limbs. Before the storm, they predicted the wind would blow down snow-laden limbs on lines and cause power outages. However there were very few outages in this area associated with the storm. You can see the oak tree in front of house is mostly bare. |
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| Here's Ward shoveling the first pathway down the driveway. |
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| Luckily, our neighbor came to clear his mother's driveway with his front end loader. Her driveway is directly across the street from ours. In the process of trying to find places to put the snow from her house, he cleared some of our driveway, too. Yea! |
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| I took a walk in the neighborhood to see if I could make it out to the main road. I made it and found the main road mostly wet. Our street went from barely passable to seeing blacktop like in this picture. However, the small side streets hadn't been touched. I think our neighbor cleared what had been done. |
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| Late afternoon, the blue skies got some high clouds. |
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| The backyard remains largely untouched at this point. I'm not sure where the deer rode out the storm. |
I'm glad you made it through the storm without any problems such as power outages. Being that I am used to tons of snow I can see just how deep it was even in your first photo. Is it rare for your area to get that much snow in one storm?
ReplyDeleteI think I might have had half a foot here and I'm still getting used to the panicking people do here over a couple of inches after living in the snow belt most of my life.
It is very rare to get this much snow in one storm--a once in a lifetime kind of event.
DeleteWhere did Lois live? I know what she means about people panicking about snow amounts--we are in a snow belt and it makes me laugh when people talk about getting "dumped" with 4 inches of snow. 8-12 inches at a time isn't unusual for us, and having several consecutive days like that is also fairly typical. A blizzard is a whole different ball of wax--the wind and icing on the road from snow blowing over the roads is scary and treacherous. I'm glad you came through it well and are starting to dig out. The sunshine on the snow looks so pretty! I think the picture of the trail shoveled out through the driveway gives a good picture of how much you got--and it's a lot!
DeleteDarn, I lost my long comment. Anyway, Lois lived near Lake Erie in PA and experienced lake effect snow. Now she lives further south close to Pittsburgh.
DeleteThe problem with places that aren't used to a lot snow is that they don't have the equipment or experience to deal with it. Snow removal is expensive and governments have to balance the expense of being ready for a big snow storm with maybe never using the equipment. Being ready for the big one ties up a lot of money that could be used elsewhere. Also, there's just not enough experience to know what to do. I also think one of the biggest factors is the news that makes a hyperbole out of everything.
Oh, I bet Lois got dumped with more than we do when she lived there.
DeleteYou're right about the snow removal equipment. The other thing that happens when you live in a high snowfall area is that you are more likely to have a vehicle that handles the snow well--one of our 2 vehicles is a 4 wheel drive pickup.
I don't think this particular storm coverage was hyperbole, but you are right, that can happen. My husband and I have 1 particular weatherman who we get a chuckle out of--he loves storms and gets overly excited when doing weather predictions, and we have to compare and contrast weather predictions to get a more accurate picture of what will happen, weather-wise. To be fair, though, lake effect weather can be a tricky one to predict--the slightest variation on wind direction can make a big difference in the weather, and it can be highly variable within a small radius. My husband came home from work one day last week asking how much snow I had to shovel--his office is right on the beach on Lake Michigan and weather conditions were awful--meanwhile, less than 10 miles away where we live, we had snow flurries.