Posts Tagged ‘Winter’
Driving Day
In the early morning darkness yesterday, with the wind blowing fiercely, mixing ground snow with the on-and-off cloudbursts of new flakes, I set off in the car with Cyndie by my side. I had taken the day off from work to transport her to a day surgery appointment tending to a minor issue with the middle finger of her right hand. I suspect I will be seeing a lot of that finger from her in the days ahead.
Since this day was all about her, I figured that most of the time would consist of restful idleness for me. I hadn’t thoroughly considered what effort it would take to set off in the pre-dawn darkness, through a fresh coating of snow on the roads, down a totally unfamiliar route, to a destination that was over an hour away from us. That drive alone turned out to be pretty exhausting. It didn’t help that we needed to get up so early that I only logged a fraction of my full night’s sleep, waking at the point of deepest slumber.
Since her appointment was early, we were one of the first patients arriving, even getting there before her nurse. As one of the first appointments of the day, they were able to get her ready for the doctor in no time and I wandered off to the family lounge. I leisurely made my way through the newspaper, hoping the reading would lull me to sleep. Before I got through the last section, the doctor arrived to provide a report of what he found. So much for a nap.
I re-joined Cyndie in the prep/recovery station. There had been a chance that they would want to take skin from her arm for a graft on the knuckle, so the anesthesiologist made sure Cyndie’s entire arm had no feeling or function. It turned out they did not need the graft, which was great, but the arm was done for the day. She couldn’t get a finger to even twitch. They supported her sleeping arm in a sling and off we went, in search of some breakfast.
All too soon, I was driving again, this time with Cyndie sound asleep beside me. At least now there was daylight so that I could see where we were going. Travel was still treacherous, with snow blowing across the road in many places. At one point, when the road turned, it was obvious that someone’s car didn’t, and it sat buried in the snow straight ahead. That could easily have been us if it had still been dark.
We arrived home safe and sound, and both fell right to sleep for a nap. When I awoke, it was time again to venture out for a drive to pick up her pain medication at our usual pharmacy which was in the opposite direction from where we had been in the morning. More wind, more snow over the road, and more driving than I have done in one day for a long time.
Just to make a fatiguing day of doing pretty much nothing even more exhausting, there were complications with the prescription I was hoping to pick up. Our usual pharmacy just happened to be having technical difficulties this day. They suggested I try a different pharmacy. Had I known this in advance, we could have chosen one closer to home. I turned around and headed back toward our place and pulled up to the drive-thru window of the second pharmacy.
How many of you can see this coming? They were having difficulty filling the prescription because it looked like the first pharmacy already took care of it. Lovely. It was a tangled mess, but pharmacy #2 made many phone calls and found a way to help us out. My little errand to pick up her prescription took twice as long as it needed to.
Finally, I was driving home again, now into the dark of night, navigating drifted roadways, and already mentally preparing for this morning’s pre-dawn hour-long commute to the day job. I wish I had driverless car technology so I could do it with my eyes closed.
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Winter Installation
They showed up! The gutter installers surprised me at the house yesterday morning. I guess the snow didn’t intimidate them one bit. I was just about to head out the door, wishing that Delilah wasn’t barking from her kennel so soon after I put her in there, when I heard a roof rake pulling down snow. That’s what she was barking about.
I opened the front door and told the guys they must be gluttons for punishment, trying to un-winter winter.
“You should have seen how bad the home we just finished was,” the foreman replied.
He claimed my house would be easy by comparison. After allowing him to up-sell me on improvements to the soffits for increased ventilation to help mitigate our ice buildup, I left them to their task and headed to work in the cities.
When I returned home in the afternoon, it appeared to me as though he over-sold the ease with which he was going to clean off the roof so they could commence with the work. It’s a good thing they pre-bid the job, because if I was paying by the hour, this ‘working in the winter’ thing would really chafe me. However, the advantage I see in doing it now is that the growing icicles are dead giveaways to areas where the old gutters are poorly installed and creating (or covering) more problems than they are solving.
One problem is just outside our bathroom window, and I’ve been suffering an uneasy feeling every time I looked out when it is dripping wet outside. It always seemed as though more water dripped over the side than washed out the downspout, and too often that drip was coming off the roof-side of the gutter! They definitely weren’t doing the job for which they were installed.
I asked the guy if he could tell if these were very old, because they seemed pretty new to me. He guessed 4 or 5 years and claimed to know who was marketing the gutter cover system these employ. He says they didn’t stay in business. I didn’t do any fact checking, because I want his version to be true, since I am now paying him to replace them!
I just hope the plan to do this work in the winter doesn’t compromise the integrity of the outcome. At least I’ll have plenty of chance to see if icicles form anyplace they shouldn’t, soon after they finish. My favorite local weather blog is making boasts about this winter having the potential of making quite an impact:
Winter is halfway over according to the calendar, but just kicking into high gear on the weather maps. In fact those weather maps look downright brutal at times the next 10 days in the Upper Midwest.
From the sound of our house creaking against the wind gusts outside overnight, combined with everything we have already experienced thus far, I think this winter may have already achieved its notoriety.
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Two Views
Winter here comes with a variety of looks. I captured two recently that reveal the dramatic difference possible from one day to the next. Not surprisingly, the temperature swings can be just as dramatic.
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Cold Balance
While we were up at the lake last weekend, I captured this interesting scene. On warm winter days, the copper tops on the posts heat up just enough in the sunlight to melt the snow that rests upon them. The resulting moisture creates a slippery junction that allows the snow cap to slide toward the direction each post cover leans. As the sun descends in the afternoon, the copper cools and the junction re-freezes, leaving the sculptures teetering in place at unlikely balances, like this one:
We didn’t get to see if this snow cap eventually fell off on its own, because the temperatures never made it back up out of the deep freeze again prior to our departure for home. I expect they are locked in place for a few days more as we are now headed into what is predicted to be historic levels of cold temperatures for the next few days.
Oddly, we awoke this morning to temperatures above freezing (33°F) even though our predicted high for today is 24°. If it makes it down all the way to the low forecast for tonight, that will be a 50° drop in a day! Since we haven’t seen temperatures go this low in almost a decade, this could be the coldest weather that two of our horses, Hunter and Cayenne, will have experienced in their lifetime.
The barn is prepped and ready for the herd to spend extended hours under shelter of a roof and out of the wind. We have buckets with electric heat in the base to keep their water from freezing. We are hoping no pipes freeze and no more windows shatter around the house. This will be the kind of cold that tests everything: people, animals, trees/plants and machines. I haven’t heard how deep the frost has reached into the ground this year, but I expect it is getting deeper than it has been for a long while.
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Anxiously Awaiting
We are absolutely thrilled to be just days away from the arrival of our friends from Guatemala, Dunia and Marco, and their sons, Marco and Jose. Cyndie was busy all day yesterday adorning our home with decorations of the season, and cleaning rooms to set up beds with her typically fabulous flair. When I wasn’t lending a hand indoors, I was out cleaning snow off the areas of the driveway that I didn’t hit when I plowed on Saturday, shoveling the deck, clearing a path to the woodshed, hauling wood to the rack by the house, packing the labyrinth path with snowshoes, and lastly, (this especially for Dunia and family…) making the first attempt to establish a path for a 2-turn bobsled run down the hill in our back yard.
I have visions of building up a big enough pile of snow just beyond the deck after a few more storms, so that eventually we can start from up on the deck! In order for that to work, we would need some really big banks of snow at those two turns, so there will be plenty of snow-construction we can work on when we aren’t off on some other local adventure.
My driveway plowing on Saturday turned into a bigger project than I planned. It was my second chance to practice maneuvering the Griz while moving snow. The ATV is working as well as I had hoped. I am learning some things about getting it to shift easily, and apparently becoming increasingly aggressive as I gain experience. I over-stressed the winch cable that lifts the plow blade and broke it, twice! Maybe I’m a slow learner since it happened a second time, but I guessed that the first break was due to the cable being old and weakened, so I didn’t change my behavior.
After I cut off the bad portion of the cable and re-clamped a fresh end, I figured it would be as strong as ever. When that broke almost immediately, I decided I must have been trying to lift the blade beyond its stop point. After applying the fix a second time, I paid a lot more attention to the process of lifting the blade, and as a result, had no more problems the rest of the way.
Now, with all the snow cleaned and ready to entertain guests, the forecast is predicting flurries tonight and snow showers tomorrow. The difference between the two main seasonal chores of mowing grass in summer and shoveling snow in winter is that you know after mowing that you have at least a week before needing to cut the grass again, but with shoveling, you just might have to start over again on the very next day. There’s no rest for the weary.
Usually, after a snow storm, we get smacked with extremely cold air, but since this is just a small system of passing showers, it looks like our daily high temperatures will be going up! As of now, Wednesday is predicted to reach a degree short of the melting point. That will make creating the large banked turns of the bobsled run as easy as baking a cake.
Dunia, Marco, and sons, we hope you are able to enjoy your day of travel tomorrow. We are looking forward to greeting you at the airport in the evening so we can whisk you away to our Wintervale wonderland where our creatures, great and small, are all looking forward to getting to know you.
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Cold Images
I am thrilled to present a photo that Cyndie sent me, taken with her iPhone yesterday morning on her way up to the house from the barn, after feeding the horses:
That sun dog hung around for a long time after sunrise for us. On her way down to the barn, despite an excruciating headache from a sinus infection, she called me and told me to get my camera and take pictures of the sunrise. I was skeptical that I would be able to get a workable shot looking directly at the sun with my little pocket camera, but I gave it a try. This is my version from about a half-hour earlier than hers:
Just the night before, I had been trying to capture how the setting sun was illuminating all the icy branches of the trees. None of my attempts were able to match what I could see with my eyes, but I did end up with a sunset shot that I like a lot.
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While reviewing the sun dog shots from the morning, I realized I had captured the sun setting on our horizon the very evening before. I think they make a nice pair.
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Spring Arrives
It seems fitting to follow that series about winter survival training with a picture of what spring looks like around here this year. Yes, the calendar shows today to be the first day of spring, but winter has not released its grip, and the temperatures in this region are down in the single digits this morning. The trailer load of wood for our paddock fencing is still stuck where they parked it back in January, once again, covered with snow.
I saw a note indicating that 8 of the last 10 Mondays have involved accumulations of snow or sleet that disrupted the morning traffic in our metro area. It turns out, I picked a good day not to drive to work this year, having chosen Mondays as my day off for the 4-day work week.
Many people are contrasting all these snow events with the weather we had last year at this time, when it hit 80°. I’m having problems remembering that.
The snow we received two days ago was followed by significant wind. I did a rather cursory job of plowing, knowing that there would be a fair amount of drifting that would need to be cleaned up eventually. I figured I would do it yesterday when I got home from work, but it was still blowing, and the windchill wouldn’t have been very fun to work in, so I saved it for later today.
I’m hoping that today, it being spring and all, the afternoon will be much more hospitable for being exposed out on the tractor.
Cool ‘Gloo Tool
Members of the Hays clan probably remember the year we miscalculated the dimensions of our igloo and needed to get a ladder, and ultimately add an internal support wall, to finish what became my first-ever two room igloo. Well, someone has come up with a tool that will prevent that and allow us to create a perfectly shaped igloo dome. Check out Grand Shelters Inc’s ICEBOX®!
The ICEBOX® tool in action
Don’t forget, we will be returning to the site of that wonderful winterland getaway where I like to build igloos, this February. Hopefully, the climate will still provide enough snow for such endeavors by the time that weekend arrives. It would be an ideal opportunity to test out such a tool. If I ever get around to creating that wish-list I’ve been asked to make, I will be sure to include information about the ICEBOX® on it. It isn’t an inexpensive tool, but it’s not likely to become a mass-produced, more affordable novelty, so I may merely ask for contributions toward the cost. It would be worth my coming up with the difference, at least to try it out.
What price for snow fun, anyway?
Relative Something 