Posts Tagged ‘snow storms’
This Weekend
I’ve run out of things to say about this record-setting string of February snow storms. I refer you to my favorite weather blog, MPR’s Updraft, for a description of the next wave expected to dictate my weekend activities.
This efficient snow producer comes with wind this time. Blowing and drifting snow will be an issue Saturday night and Sunday. Warnings run all the way to the Mexico border in southeast Arizona.
https://blogs.mprnews.org/updraft/2019/02/two-act-snow-system-for-minnesota-this-weekend
NOAA
Last night, I re-plowed the drifted edges of the driveway to open it back to full width, and cleaned up the snow rubble left by the township plow, in preparation for doing it all again on Saturday.
While I was down by the road, I re-attached our mailbox that had been blown off its base for the umpteenth time by the powerful snow wash that rolls off that big plow blade.
I wish my little replica blade on the ATV could throw snow like that beast can. Would it hurt him to slow down some as he reaches my driveway, to take some of the oomph out of that blast of snow?
Apparently, it would. He shows me no mercy.
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Best Part
I might be putting my “great-north-winter-lover” membership in jeopardy, but the best part of my day yesterday was the six minutes when it almost stopped snowing. That pressing feeling of concern over whether the roof tops of all our buildings will cope, how we will ever get our paths cleared again, and if the Grizzly ATV and its aging plow blade will endure the abuse I’ve been putting them through, lifted just long enough to allow some precious moments of relief.
Then it was back to the harsh reality of plowing and shoveling snow up against piles that are already so tall that we are barely able to add to them, while new flakes quickly covered up the progress being made.
Walking Delilah anywhere other than on the driveway now requires snowshoes. Even then, the blowing snow has filled in many of our previous paths to the point of oblivion, and I had to abort a plan of trekking around the outside of the hayfield, because it was too much work fording the deep snow.
Since Delilah breaks trail out in front of me, she was more than happy with my call to bring her back to retrace our steps toward the house. At one point, she picked up a scent of interest just off to the side, and I paused to see what she would do.
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One step into the depths was as far as she got. Apparently the smell wasn’t worth further effort.
It’s official. This is now the snowiest February since the weather watchers started keeping records. Why stop here? Might as well make a run at most snow in any month. We are told there is another snow system taking aim for us this weekend.
I can’t imagine what we are going to get when March arrives. Historically, that is when the biggest snow dumps used to occur. Maybe the shifting global climate has moved that phenomena up a month.
We can only hope.
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My Day
Honestly, I never seriously thought I would one day be telling stories about how different things were, back in my day. That’s something old people do.
Last night, there was a news ticker across the bottom of the tv screen announcing school closings for today. At that point, not a single flake had wafted down out of the sky. How does that work?
When I was in school, if we woke up in the morning with mounds of snow covering everything, we would immediately turn on the local radio broadcast and listen for our school to be named in the list of closings. Superintendents waited until the last-minute to announce their decision. We never knew the night before.
Nowadays, kids know before they even go to sleep. They have no idea how easy they have it.
Have winter storm forecasts become so much more reliable that school officials trust them that much farther in advance?
This is what was posted yesterday as NOAA‘s model of what today’s storm would look like:
That was enough for me to throw in the towel on driving the long distance across the entire Twin Cities today.
If we end up with nine inches of snow by the end of the day, it’ll be another feather in the cap of present-day meteorology, for accuracy of their storm modeling.
And, I will feel justified to have voluntarily missed another mid-week shift at the day-job, avoiding the hazards of two rush-hour commutes during a snow event.
If the snow accumulation doesn’t measure up, I’ll be reminded of the old days, when we never knew how much snow we were going to get, until it had actually fallen.
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Relative Something 