Posts Tagged ‘spring snowstorm’
Week Apart
At the risk of belaboring the point, here are two images of our home, one week apart:
Sunday, March 15
Sunday, March 22
The temperature swing from Saturday to yesterday was a drop of more than 40 degrees. March weather can be dizzying. I won’t deny an enduring urge to stay snuggled in bed instead of getting up to slog through all the mud on our trails and in the paddocks.
Thank goodness we’ve got the horses to warm our hearts, no matter what version of early spring weather is dished out. They don’t let the mud underfoot bother them. No, they consider it a valuable asset for skin and hair treatments.
Cyndie found that two of them were ready to have their caked-on hair brushed out, while the other two preferred to keep wearing their mud packs. To each their own.
A week from now, it will just as easily be the other way around.
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Snow Coping
There isn’t much I can say about yesterday’s struggle against the elements that is much of a surprise. Really, the thing that made the day most challenging for me was the fact that Cyndie was still gone. If the universe allows, that problem could be solved by the end of today.
I made it a priority to get the path to her side of the garage cleared while letting other plowing and shoveling wait for later.
It was not easy to plow through the deep snow on the pavement. I didn’t lower the blade very far for the first several trips down and back along the length of the driveway. That mostly created a mess, but perseverance and many repeated runs eventually allowed me to get down to the asphalt.
As the snow continued falling throughout the day, the flakes kept melting on the driveway surface, much to my surprise. However, by evening, the temperature had dropped enough that the wetness on the pavement began to freeze, and soon flakes began to collect again.
Asher had worn out my willingness to let him roam, and the horses received the briefest of visits to fill feed buckets, so the rest of my time was filled with shoveling and doing some laundry. Housekeeping under the barn overhang was skipped entirely, so that will be a fantastic mess by today, I’m sure.
I can honestly say I am looking forward to returning to sharing duties around here. If I am going to walk Asher through the woods, it will help greatly to have another person to help tromp a path into the deep snow. Walking him anywhere other than on the plowed driveway was practically a death march yesterday.
He behaves as if he knows I cannot keep up with him.
I will never get the floors as clean as Cyndie does, but I’m doing my damndest to make the place presentable for her return tonight. First, I suspect there may be some drifts that need to be cleared, based on the sound of the howling wind all night long.
By Wednesday, the temperatures are predicted to rise above freezing with appearances from the sun, so all this snow will melt and swamp the lowlands. The horses will be pleased to find Paddock Lake filled to the brim for splashing.
We will be going from snow coping to mud mania for a while. I wonder if I can get away with calling in sick for a few days.
Don’t tell Cyndie I wrote that.
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Snowstorm Underway
As of this morning, I would say the weather service delivered accurate warnings about this “historic” winter storm. Unfortunately, Asher decided the snow gave him freedom to do whatever he pleased, leading me on a near heart attack march through the deep drifts, following his tracks up 650th St. to convince him to get to the barn, “NOW!”
Not sure if his e-collar was not tight enough or if he had gotten out of range, but it is now much tighter and set to a higher level of getting his attention and cooperation.
Before he disappeared on me, I paused to take a picture of the drift off the roof.
Down the hill in the woods, I saw him stop to poop. After a few steps of trudging through the snow somewhere near where our trail should have been, I looked for his fluorescent orange vest and couldn’t find it. Hustling through the deep snow to find his tracks, I could see he was off on a leaping run and never spied him again until I had huffed and puffed my way across most of our acres to the road. Then it took cresting the hill to the north and spotting him a mile ahead of me. It was so far that I struggled to identify whether he was still moving away from me or coming back.
It took losing sight of him behind a rise in the road to figure it out.
The horses are coping the way horses do. I don’t know if they experience regret, but I hope Mia is cognizant of how hard I was pleading with her to accept a cover before the storm arrived.
Sadly, the wind direction at the start of the snow was from the east and blew right under the overhang. It has switched now, so they at least have that level of relief from the blizzard.
Now I’m headed out to see if I can put a mid-storm dent in the drifts over the driveway with my Yamaha Grizzly 660.
This is one instance when I will have no problem allowing “good enough” to prevail over the usual target of perfection.
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Unnecessary Roughness
I’m throwing a penalty flag on the weather for unnecessary roughness. I don’t know what forecast model Mia uses to make her decisions, but the ones I was reviewing last night looked unfairly brutal. When Asher and I headed out to feed the horses late in the afternoon yesterday, precipitation was just starting to fall. It was coming down mostly as snow, but very wet and sticky snow.
The bigger problem was the angry wind pushing those icy crystals sideways with gusts over 30 mph.
I tried three different times yesterday to sweet-talk Mia into accepting a blanket, but I failed every time. She wasn’t buying my sales pitch. I even tried enlisting the help of Mix and Light in coercing her cooperation, but Mia ran from their attention just like she did from me.
That picture above shows the typical fracture in the herd these days. Mia is the odd horse out, per usual.
As Asher and I were making our way back toward the house, I spotted that Mia had lain down for a rest at the top of the rise.
She certainly doesn’t show any signs of being stressed to be the loner. Instead, I’d describe her as showing a growing confidence in being independent of the others.
I just hope she knows what she is up against with these two spring storms barreling over us between last night and next Monday. There wasn’t a lot of snow accumulation by the time I went to bed last night, but the wind was pretty fierce. It sounds like that will be the easier of the two events.
Sunday will be bringing a lot more snow. Around a foot of accumulation is possible. Cyndie is currently scheduled to return on Monday, so I will need to prioritize clearing the driveway so she can get in. Deep snow is not a great welcome home when returning from Florida.
I imagine she might consider that a case of unnecessary weather roughness.
She’ll get no argument from me.
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Relative Something 