Posts Tagged ‘snow’
Mad Weather
Using just a couple hours in the dark Tuesday night to plow and shovel the 9 inches of snow we received, left the overall job of cleaning up around here far from complete. I spent yesterday at the day-job again, arriving home with no interest in rushing out again to do the rest of the plowing or shoveling, so plenty of spots remain covered.
The deck ended up with a fascinating snowscape of waves and lines unlike anything I remember seeing before. We have ended up with a variety of interesting patterns over the years, but never one with peaks so tall while the slots between remained wide open.
It must have been the result of a perfect dryness of the flakes and lack of wind while they fell.
The pending challenge which we are very curious to have revealed, is whether the predicted next wave of snow will double what already fell Tuesday, and make our job of clearing paths and trails –and the back deck– even more challenging that it was already going to be.
Last night, Cyndie and I watched a rented sci-fi thriller, “Life” (2017), a movie that depicts a space station crew studying a one-celled life form picked up on Mars that unexpectedly grows into a threatening menace. At one point in the movie, the lead scientist ponders the terrorizing underway by the organism they had named, “Calvin”.
“Calvin doesn’t hate us. But he has to kill us in order to survive.”
While out in the snow last night, under a “downpour” of more freshly falling flakes, I realized I was feeling a similar sense about the multiple blasts of winter weather battering us of late. My mind tends to perceive the storms as having cognition and intentionally pummeling our region with increasing levels of abuse.
But the weather doesn’t hate us. It is just an unemotional result of ingredients playing out on a global scale. Somewhere, a butterfly flapped its wings and we got walloped by winter.
Still, I can’t deny the distinct impression that, even though the weather might not hate us, it’s behaving an awful lot like it’s a little bit mad at us right now.
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Crosstrek Love
Have I mentioned how much I love my Subaru Crosstrek? It virtually drove itself home yesterday in the heavy snowfall we received. I just pressed the pedals every once in a while. The car plowed through the deep snow easily, holding the lane even when I had no idea where the lane was.
My only complaint was the icing on the wiper blades, but I wasn’t alone. Everyone was having the same problem I was on the last leg, reaching out their window to attempt “thwacking” the blade as it swung near, and pulling off wherever possible to get out and knock off ice.
This was my view toward the end:
There was nowhere to pull over, as each spot I came to was already filled by two or three cars, creating a scary hazard of potential collisions.
When I reached my driveway, I paused to clean my windshield so I could see to stay as close to the center of the pavement as possible. There was no guarantee that I would make it all the way up to the house.
After I parked in the garage, I noticed the back of my car was so coated by snow that my brake lights were hardly noticeable. I had been running with my 4-way flashers on during the craziest portion between River Falls and home, but they probably weren’t making a big difference in visibility.
After dinner, I went out to plow and poked a yardstick into the snow up by the house to check the depth. It was a little deeper down toward the shop garage, but this reading was a solid 8.5 inches.
That melty snow of last weekend is a thing of the past now. We have a fresh dose of the real McCoy. According to the forecast, this batch of flakes was just the warm up. Tonight and tomorrow, we are supposed to receive even more than what fell yesterday.
I’m not sure where I will put it all when plowing and shoveling. The piles are already impressively tall.
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Contrast Comparison
Let’s review.
Last week, polar vortex:
A few days ago, February thaw:
Yesterday morning, the commute to the cities was an ice adventure. On one of the close-to-home country roads, my tires lost grip and the Crosstrek started to float at a bit of a sideways angle. At the wee hours of morning, there were no other cars around, otherwise, that slide could have been a head-on collision disaster, as I encroached into the oncoming lane.
After a short distance, the tires re-gripped and the car violently responded with a sudden jolt of physics reality, returning without trouble to rolling straight forward, aligned in the proper lane of travel.
I adjusted my speed accordingly for the rest of the commute.
The residual trepidation that gripped me after that brief adventure in free flight was the possibility, or probability, of someone driving toward me losing traction like I had and then floating uncontrollably into my lane. Luckily, there were only a few cars that approached while I was on two-lane roads. After that, it was all divided highway.
I witnessed no crashes driving in the 5 o’clock hour, but my nerves were further rattled by a radio report that 4 salting trucks had slid into ditches in the county just north of our home.
I carefully pulled my car into the parking spot at work and breathed a sigh of relief. When I stepped out onto the glazed pavement, I was startled over how slippery it actually was. I couldn’t walk up the tiniest incline of sidewalk to the front door. I needed to “penguin” my way over to some snow and walk on that.
A coworker had the best solution for all this crazy winter weather we’ve been facing lately. Humans should be genetically engineered to hibernate during winter.
This is how I am able to recognize I am truly aging. That idea actually sounds appealing to me.
I suppose in a few more years, I will start talking about moving south over the winter months.
It’s enough to make my 20-year-old self roll over in his hypothetical grave. There are days I miss that guy.
I gotta admit, though, the sight of my 60-year milestone approaching on the horizon has me leaning more toward liking the looks of that future snow-bird guy a bit more than the young winter athlete of years gone by.
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Couple Shots
I was granted the honor of walking our trash and recycling bins down to the road with Delilah yesterday, and at the high spot of the driveway, beside the hay-field, we paused to take in the sunset, as well as the line sculptures getting carved in the snow by the bitter wind.
It was photo worthy.
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Finally, Snow
So, if you are going to return north from a week in Florida, in January, you might as well dive head first into the coldest and snowiest days all winter, to make sure you will absolutely and thoroughly miss where you’ve just been.
Luckily for us, our animals so completely missed us that the love and attention they have showered over us has gone a long way to offset the angst of the painfully adult dose of winter that has greeted our return. (We still have all 9 chickens! Although, they weren’t all that fired up to show us any love. They may be hardy winter birds, but they don’t seem hardy enough to want to venture out of the coop when it is really cold, or the ground is covered with new snow.)
Instead of driving to the day-job, I stayed home and plowed snow drifts yesterday. It is hard to tell how much snow fell around here, because the depth ranges from about an inch in some places, to two feet in others.
I took a picture with Delilah in it, but I was focused on showing the fine pathway I cleared around the back pasture fence line.
Then I noticed that interesting cloud bank in the sky.
That was some pretty distinct delineation of cloud and clear sky right there. Nature sure makes cool stuff.
As Delilah and I walked the path around the pasture, I noticed the horses had made cute little circle tracks in the fresh snow, leaving little visible spots of where they foraged grass to graze.
It almost looks like they were on cross-country skis, as they moseyed along.
Speaking of tracks in the snow, as Delilah and I started our walk from the house, breaking trail in the new snow, we came to the spot where our trail cam captured a view of the fox last year. Something had just entered our property there within the hours since this overnight snowfall.
I decided to let Delilah follow the trail into the neighbor’s woods, in case we might find where the fox has a den. She was thrilled to have been granted access to this forbidden land and leaped through the snow to explore where the tracks led.
Well, even though it had been less than twelve hours since the majority of the snow fell, there were already a dizzying web of trails crisscrossing the wooded slopes. The snow was fresh and just deep enough that identification was difficult, but there were so many different pathways that I soon realized the chance we were following one fox had become very unlikely.
We reached a spot where tracks were everywhere, and the leaves beneath the snow were turned up in a wide variety of places. For a second, I wondered if it was a pack of coyotes, but then I deduced it was much more likely to be a flock of turkeys.
No wonder Delilah was so excited over that particular location.
I convinced her to reroute our exploration back toward our property and gave up on hunting for a fox den.
At least we finally have a snow cover that offers better footing than the icy glazing we had battled the previous month.
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Weather Delays
What a day of travel we endured yesterday. Florida was experiencing a cycle of non-stop rain and Minnesota was getting smacked with heavy snowfall. It impacted our plans on both ends.
I took one last photo of the pool before we left, in the dreary rain, all covered up for the cool week ahead.
By noon, we were at the Fort Myers airport for our early afternoon flight. Unfortunately, it didn’t depart in the early afternoon, as planned. In fact, it didn’t depart at all.
The initial delay was rumored to be because of a wind shear situation that was preventing our plane from being allowed to land. It circled the Fort Myers airport until it was so low on fuel that it needed to divert to a different airport to refuel.
Eventually, after several delays that pushed it to a 4:30 departure time, our flight was ultimately canceled. The next flight that airline offered was going to be in a couple of days.
That didn’t work for us.
Cyndie contacted her parents and they were able to find us seats on a Delta flight that was to leave at 6:30. We had to get to baggage claim to find our luggage and then make a second trip through security.
We got a little nervous when that flight announced a departure delay, but it only happened once. This time they said air traffic control in Minneapolis was dealing with bad weather and pushing arrivals out. Once our plane was in the air, we figured we were done worrying, but there was a moment of discomfort when we got stuck circling a couple times before final descent was able to happen.
Initially, we only found one of our bags at MSP baggage claim, a process complicated by their announcing the wrong carousel for pick up. The clock was ticking for us because every minute of delay allowed the snowy roads to get worse than they already were.
By 11:00 p.m. we were finally in our car and ready to forge our way on unplowed roads for the hour-long drive home.
It was wicked. Visibility was poor, and the snow-covered roads were treacherous. As we got close to home, the wind was creating bumpy waves of drifted snow across the pavement.
Surprisingly, the harsh conditions only added 15-minutes to our drive home from the airport. Unsurprisingly, the horrible driving convinced me that I would not be making the trip to the day-job this morning, like I had originally planned.
Looks like I’ll be plowing and shoveling, instead.
That’s one way to welcome us home again.
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Flying North
Today, we fly back to winter, just in time for a blast of snow and Arctic cold air to put an exclamation point on the end of our 9-day visit to Florida. We ate like royalty, played cards, laughed, shopped, explored, watched movies and never wore mittens once.
Yesterday, maybe as a primer for our return, the temperature hovered on the cool side of comfortable, compressing our outdoor activity to a couple matches of bocce ball and a walk back to the house before the next rain shower.
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Barb was the difference maker in both close competitions, despite the missing sunshine that would have allowed for much more relaxed muscles during tosses.
We expect to arrive to the Minneapolis airport in the late afternoon today, and hope to drive the hour toward home without suffering any delays that may result from snow-covered roads.
Whether I will be able to execute my usual commute across the Twin Cities in my return to the day-job tomorrow morning remains a mystery, at this point.
The forecast (as of late last night) is rather ominous:
The predicted high temperature on Wednesday could remain in the double-digits (F) below zero. That will be the warmest part of the day.
One tiny shred of consolation about coming home to this brutal weather, is the fact that the polar vortex pushing down into the middle of the country will have an impact all the way to Florida. Cyndie’s parents had us put the insulating cover on their pool last night, in preparation for the cool week ahead.
Good thing we are going home, so we don’t have to suffer in any of the cold Florida weather they will be dealing with down here.
It’s all relative, isn’t it?
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Mixed Tracks
The thing about aging, especially complaining about the less than glamorous aspects associated with it, is that there are always going to be people older than you for whom the whining will appear inconsequential.
“You think that’s bad, just wait until…”
We each have our moments in time. It’s natural to try comparing, but it’s also natural, to discount each other’s comparisons.
I used to be able to write my name in the snow when peeing. Now I just make Pollock style splatter painting designs.
At least I can still pee.
Speaking of tracks in the snow, I captured a cute combination of chicken traffic along with what I’m assuming were prints of a local prowling outdoor cat.
I’m not sure who was there first, but it is unlikely they were actually wandering around together.
If you pay close enough attention, you will see the tracks of the chickens are pointing in opposite directions.
I also think the paw print is a double exposure. It seems like too many toes, but I suspect it is a function of two feet being placed in the same spot.
Watching Delilah on walks, and often wanting to capture pictures of her paw prints, I have come to notice how often her back feet step in the same place as her front feet did. I think the cat was doing the same thing.
I am reminded of a snowy morning during my trek in Nepal when two of my travel mates were pestering the Sherpa guides to find us some tracks from an elusive snow leopard.
Eventually, (we think) they used the old trick of making some rather convincing prints in the snow with their own hands.
Everybody had a good laugh over it, although no admissions were ever offered, and a question over authenticity lingered unresolved. We were happy to imagine the excitement of what such evidence implied, if it had been real.
My mind has returned to my 2009 Himalayan trek because we watched a Netflix DVD last night called, “The Himalayas,” which dramatically told the story of South Korean climber, Um Hong-Gil, leading an expedition in 2005 to attempt recovering the bodies of three friends who died there a year earlier.
I find such expedition movies fun for the brief few minute glimpses they almost always include of the flight to Lukla, the swinging bridges, the rocky trails through rhododendron trees, the shrines, prayer flags, and initial views of Everest that are all the very places I walked.
Even though we weren’t on a mountain climbing expedition, those who were, traveled the same route we did, to get where they were going.
We all made mixed tracks in the snow on the trails.
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Snow Wrecker
The worst thing to happen during snow season is a rainstorm. Dry snow is so much better than wet snow. Wet snow becomes slush after a time, and after the day-long rainfall we experienced yesterday, we ended up with nothing but a soupy slush.
The ground is frozen enough below the snow that water won’t soak in. Instead, it pools until the water reaches an outlet to the next lowest spot.
The drainage from the paddocks that flows across the back pasture was running like a river when Delilah and I braved the rain for her mid-day walk.
She made it across without much effort, but my big feet were going to make a definite splash. I stopped to gather my courage and plan my maneuver. Delilah busied herself with a face wash while waiting for me to take some pictures.
Everything I tried to do was made significantly more complicated by the umbrella I was fumbling to keep over my head.
As we neared the road on this typical trek around the property, I spotted the stump where our mailbox is usually mounted. That meant a snowplow must have roared past and tossed up a blade-full of the slush; a mass that packs more punch than my plastic mailbox can survive.
We found the box portion unceremoniously discarded upside down in the ditch, soaking up rain. Luckily, the plow had blown by before the mail delivery arrived, so there were no drenched bills inside.
Delilah growled at the odd scene as we approached.
I guess I kind of growled, too. Expletives.
The paddocks are a disaster of packed down slush, transformed into a dangerously hard and slippery wet surface against which the horses struggle to maneuver their hefty weight. We didn’t bring them inside overnight Wednesday, despite it ending up being the smarter thing to have done.
I brought them inside last night, with hope they might appreciate it even more, after their previous misery.
Even Pequenita was able to express her opinion about the nasty conditions outside yesterday, even though she is supposed to be an exclusively indoor cat.
Before the rain had totally destroyed the several inches of new snow that had fallen on the deck at the beginning of this weather event, I was preparing to light a fire in the fireplace. I opened the door to grab some kindling from the box out there, without noticing the cat had positioned herself right in front of me.
‘Nita walked outside before I had a chance to corral her.
Two steps into the sloppy snow, she just stopped. It was not a good day for an escape.
Maybe not good for her. Escape is pretty much all I want to do from this weather fiasco.
Rain has no place in our northern snow belt during winter. Bah, humbug!
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Relative Something 