Posts Tagged ‘snow’
More Snow
Believe it or not, we spent most of the day yesterday clearing snow!
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Remember the Martin house? Before and after…
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Cyndie likes to shovel a path to the chicken coop so the hens have an easy path to get to their favorite spot under the overhang with the horses. They are spoiled living such a cushy life here with us.
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The day started with snow showers, but around noon the clouds moved out and provided an afternoon of melting under bright sunlight. The snow on the hay shed was losing the battle to gravity, in very slow motion. The snow on the chicken coop was losing the battle with the high March sunshine.
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Here is a before and after view of the labyrinth. We’re going to need to strap on the snowshoes and retrace our steps again.
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Saving Daylight
It’s that 23-hour day again. We all get cheated out of a normal hour of sleep in order to feel like there is more daylight today than there was yesterday. Whatever.
Living with, and caring for animals, is one way to notice how laughable our arbitrary adjustment of clock hours is to nature.
Last week, the chickens had already responded to the increased hours of daylight by restarting their egg production. Yesterday, Cyndie cooked up “home-laid” eggs for breakfast again. Even without a lot of live-bug protein in their diets yet, our free-range hens sure produce delectable eggs.
So, the storm blew in yesterday with gusto. Strong winds toppled the multiple-unit Martin house. Neither of us noticed if any residents were displaced. The activity there has rarely been visible, even though there is some nest material inside.
Just like predicted, we received rain for a few hours before it changed over to snow, so the overall accumulation appears to be a more reasonable 5-ish inches (and still falling), instead of twice that, or more, that it could have been.
There’s not enough light out yet to show you how gorgeous the new snow looks, stuck to all the trees, but we’ll have our cameras out while plowing and shoveling all day today, so I expect there will be some scenic shots to share eventually.
In the mean time, here is a shot that Cyndie took which I adore:
I asked her why her snowshoe trail took on the whimsical “s” curves, and she said that she was looking down as she trudged along, and for that last stretch had resorted to simply following Delilah’s footprints in the deep snow.
I guess it’s a visual of where the most canine-alluring scents were wafting in the air on that trail-breaking trek.
Happy Daylight Saving Time to those territories who make the adjustment.
Yawn.
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Good Use
We made good use of the gorgeous day we were granted yesterday, before today’s winter storm arrives. I made sure we had plenty of dry wood inside for long hours in front of the fireplace, watching the flakes fly outside.
Do you remember the picture I posted last week of our labyrinth hidden beneath the blanket of a season’s worth of snow? We decided it was time to do something about that. We are doing a lot of heavy thinking lately, and the meditative stroll along the labyrinth path will be a welcome resource for deep contemplations.
Even though it may get buried by another foot of snow today and tomorrow, at least we will have a noticeable impression to guide us in the days that follow.
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We think Cyndie’s phone, which captured the image of me on the left, probably had a foggy lens when she pulled it out of her pocket. There is quite a difference in quality of the pictures we took of each other with our phones.
Figuring out the turns and leaving appropriate space between rows took a lot of mental effort with so few landmarks visible. When our effort was completed, we were rewarded by a spirit-lifting visit from a pair of bald eagles who circled multiple times, very low, just above the tree tops.
I got the impression they approved of our effort. The thought did occur to me while we were carving out the well-defined path, that the pattern of the 11-circuit Chartres labyrinth would look great from the sky.
Okay, let it snow today. We made good use of the calm before the storm that yesterday provided.
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It’s Possible
Is it possible that the rising global air temperatures support higher amounts of water vapor aloft which can add fuel and intensity to localized weather events? Anecdotal evidence from my experiences certainly aligns with that line of thinking.
Today, we are granted a calm before the expected weekend punch of significant new accumulations of heavy, wet snow. It’s hard to know what to do with such a day. We don’t feel inclined to start any new projects while consumed by this looming distraction of an “other shoe about to drop.”
Who can concentrate when meteorologists are tossing out phrases like, “thunder snow!”?
“This storm looks likely to produce convective snow bursts Saturday afternoon and evening across southern Minnesota. That could mean thunder snow.
Snowfall rates may reach 2″ per hour for a few hours Saturday. Things could get crazy with lightning, thunder and snow coming down incredibly hard. If that happens, most of the accumulation could occur within just a few hours Saturday afternoon into evening.”
https://blogs.mprnews.org/updraft/2019/03/game-on-major-winter-storm-likely-this-weekend/
This storm sounds so intimidating, there was even a Minnesota Judge who issued a restraining order prohibiting any more snow in the state, “especially within Hennepin County.”
Of course, he was clear to communicate that this did not prohibit the storm from impacting Wisconsin, Iowa, or North and South Dakota. I suppose he did not want to seem to be ruling beyond his jurisdiction.
Weather forecasts being the educated guesses that they are, computer models show a possibility for some of Saturday’s precipitation to fall as rain, south of an indeterminate rain/snow dividing line. The restraining order doesn’t appear to include any provision for restricting rainfall.
Rain can really spoil a good snowscape, but if we get some of that, it will, at the very least, reduce the amount of plowing I would need to do.
Anything is possible.
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Necessity Invents
I was running out of options, in regard to clearing snow. In addition to the advancing drifts narrowing the bottom half of our driveway, we are facing the possibility of more heavy, wet snow this coming weekend. If I don’t open up some space, the next snowfall would really be a pain to clear.
Necessity being the mother of invention, I needed to figure out a way to open more width along the rise where the drifting occurs.
It was tedious, but using the most available tool –our Grizzly plow– I decided to make a series of 45-degree pushes in little “bites” to move the bank out wider. In the first 20 feet, I got stuck twice, and needed to shovel my way out.
Getting hung up like that was not going to cut it, if I was going to finish this project all at once. I needed to alter my technique.
I decided to skip ahead to focus on the narrowest section first. If getting stuck was going to keep me from getting very far, I should at the very least widen the narrowest portion of the plowed driveway.
I can’t say it was any particular savvy on my part, other than recognizing what was happening, but my switch to a new spot arbitrarily reversed my direction so that I was cutting into the snow bank from the opposite angle. In so doing, I ended up pushing first with the skinny side of the plow blade.
It quickly became apparent that this orientation facilitated backing out, while coming from the other direction was getting me hung up on the wide end of the blade.
I didn’t get stuck once finishing the rest of that whole southern stretch of the driveway.
John – 1; Drifts – 0.
I win!
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Endless Loop
Our weather is like a broken record, in the sense of a vinyl record, where the needle gets stuck, jumping back to play the same sound over and over. I almost titled this post, “Broken Record,” but I figured most people younger than me might miss the connotation.
“Needle gets stuck?!”
Our weather is like an endless loop of snow and cold, with barely a break between.
Delilah is showing increasing weariness over the deep snow and brutally cold temperatures. I had to cut short our afternoon walk on Sunday because her feet were bothering her. She would walk a short distance and then lay down to tend to her paws while I waited.
It became very clear that she was happy with my decision to reverse direction and head straight back to the house.
She allowed me to pause for a picture of the labyrinth, covered in an unblemished winter blanket. The path is impossible to discern.
Even though it hadn’t snowed all day yesterday, as I approached home on my commute from work, there seemed to be a surprising amount of snow in the air.
The wind was blowing last Friday’s fresh powder aloft. Is that a big deal? It was when I reached our driveway. A drift was forming on a large portion of the southern banks of the already narrow opening.
Reminds me of the predicament I was managing last week in the wee hours of the morning.
It’s an endless loop.
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Beautiful Outside
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Sure, it’s cold outside this morning, but in the days after half a foot of fresh powdery snow has fallen, it’s also really beautiful.
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Ahhh, winter.
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Plowed Snow
I took a picture to show how far snow flies off the township snowplow blade. That’s what I wish my little ATV plow blade could do. That’s not possible now that the banks on either side of our driveway are taller than the blade can throw. Guess I should have gotten that snowblower after all.
In the distance, you can see the darker snow rubble swath is wider than the road itself. In the foreground, you can see how the trees have been plastered by the spray of snow.
The energy of that flying snow is what pops our mailbox off its base every time the amount of snow is significant.
Looking again at that photo taken last Friday, it is surprising how different our landscape now looks. Today we have at least twice the depth of snow compared to when that picture was taken.
When I opened the garage to leave yesterday morning, we had only received a mere 3 or 4 more inches of light powder overnight. It made for a pretty tense early part of my commute though, because traffic was kicking up the unplowed powder into vision-blocking chaos before I reached the interstate.
At one point, I had to slow to a stop, desperately hoping I wouldn’t get rear-ended by another vehicle before the view cleared up.
By the time of my drive home from work, the late-February sun was shining through and making a significant contribution toward clearing snow off the roadways.
Our record-setting February snow totals conclude today. The weather service is predicting March will start out where February left off. We are supposed to get “plowable” amounts of snow tomorrow.
Color me not surprised.
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Long Day
When I finished fixing the winch cable on the ATV after work Monday, Cyndie helped me get the plow re-mounted so I could clean up the driveway from the morning drift adventure. It had been a long day, so I made short work of the task and headed inside to warm up.
Cyndie asked if I thought it was late enough that the chickens would be in the coop yet. That’s code for, “Will you be the one to go down and close the chickens in for the night?”
I spotted them after I’d taken just a few steps off the driveway. They weren’t inside, they were on the manure pile in the compost area.
I suppose it was warmer footing than standing in the snow. Cyndie had mucked out the stalls earlier in the afternoon and the chickens seemed to take a liking to the fresh addition on top of the snow.
After taking that picture of them, I tried to get the hens to follow me to the coop. They didn’t fall for it, I think because to get there on the shoveled pathway, required starting in the opposite direction of the coop. I got the impression their little chicken brains weren’t processing the logic.
Heck, I’ve even seen the horses, wise as we know them to be, appear to get stuck when an escape involved going away from the direction they ultimately want to achieve.
I walked to the coop without them. To waste some time while waiting for them to figure out the escape route, I started breaking trails in the deep snow around the area. Plodding down a trail that heads toward the shop garage, it occurred to me to open a path between the coop and the compost piles, for the chickens to use. One pass through the deep snow didn’t do much in the way of packing it down to make it easy for bird feet, so this didn’t offer an immediate shortcut. It did, however, bring me up behind the chickens in a way that naturally moved them off the pile in the opposite direction from the coop.
Once I had them moving, I just kept the pressure on, and created a little conga line going down the path toward their nighttime shelter, with me leading from the rear. It was pretty cute, if I do say so myself.
They marched right up the modified ramp (post-possum-crashing incident) and I was able to slide the door shut behind them. Chickens were ready to roost.
It was an entertaining end to my surprisingly long day.
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Relative Something 