The Parade of Storms Continues

February 14-15-16, 2015 — I don't know what more I can say about snow. It seems like the same apocalypse being played over and over. Saturday afternoon, a light snow began to fall and continued into the evening, and had only accumulated to a couple of inches by the time I retired for the night. Overnight, it ramped up to near blizzard proportions, and I awoke to an additional 8-10 inches on top of the three feet or so already on the ground.

The snow was tapering off when I began shoveling out Sunday morning for the fourth time in three weeks. Once again, it was very cold so the snow was of the light variety. Still, there was far more snow than space left to put it. I was suffering mild claustrophobia hemmed in by the mountains of snow surrounding my property.

The sun came out around noon but it remained very cold. The street plow went by and left a snowbank across the end of my driveway. I went out in the evening and carefully cleaned it out and leveled it off. I thought I was done for this storm. I listened to the wind howling through the night and hoped we wouldn't lose power. We didn't.

Monday morning the wind chill brought the temperature down to the equivalent of 30 below 0. I looked out the window and thought I could see another snowbank at the end of my driveway I had so carefully cleaned out the day before. I put on my Arctic gear and ventured out. Not only had the plow been by again and blocked my driveway, but the wind had blown snow into other areas I had shoveled out. I spent nearly an hour re-doing much of the previous day's shoveling, at times almost being blown over by strong wind gusts.

As I look around the neighborhood, I'm amazed at the incredible amounts of snow. Six-foot snowbanks line both sides of the street and driveways, this after a winter that didn't really get started until near the end of January.