Thrag
5784
So last night despite the blizzard conditions my wife decides she needs to go to the grocery store. She basically has no self preservation instinct. Since it’s foolish to try and dissuade her I got in the passenger seat to see if she’d even make it over the snow drifts that swept over the previously cleared drive. I figure if she makes it to the street I’ll take over. She pulls out and lines up to leave. There’s a small drift just outside the garage. Maybe 6-8 inches. Nothing the car can’t handle. I’ve driven through snow like that many times and with gentle handling the awd does fine. I tell her she needs to get some momentum and be easy on the gas once in it so as not to spin the tires. She rolls slowly into the drift and guns it. Tires dig in. And were stuck.
Mission failed. We trudge back to the garage in the 40mph horizontal snow. As we get in the door she asks “did you remember to lock the car?”. It’s a blizzard. We’re a quarter mile up a snowed in driveway that goes up a hill. I’m not sure what dog sled team equipped car thieves might be coming along at night.
This is the second time this has happened. A couple of years ago during a big storm she insisted on going to a yoga class and got stuck almost in the same exact spot. She has a gift.
Another several inches fell overnight. The drift on my deck is nearing 5ft tall.
It took about an hour and a half to clear a path from where the car was stuck back to the garage and to dig out the snow from under the car. I laid down some sand all around the tires, and rubbed the tires themselves down with sand so there’d be grit in the treads. A little rocking back and forth and working the wheel and finally I got a little grip and managed to get the car back inside! Whew!
Despite all this, and the hours I will have to spend clearing the road yet again, I still absolutely love the snow. Assuming work doesn’t get too busy and the wind doesn’t pick up again I’m totally going to go play in the snow later.
(side note, I’m getting an error trying to post a pic to the forum)
So with all this insane cold on the upper 2/3 of the country and intense heat on the lower 1/3, what are we missing for some intense tornado action?
Not gonna lie, I thought it was going to say “I still absolutely love the wife”. ;)
Houngan
5789
Some of my neighbors are mowing. On December 27th. I need to accelerate my Cleveland climate change plan.
About 5 inches at my place on Bainbridge.
CraigM
5792
That would be normal in Portland.
Except we have like 4-6 inches of snow. Which is absolutely not normal. Ever. I haven’t seen more than half an inch at once since I moved.
nKoan
5793
2017 it snowed this much in mid-January in Portland.
EDIT: def 2017
It’s rare-ish but it happens. And according to my neighbor who is in his 70s and lived in Portland his whole life, it was less rare when he was growing up.
Thrag
5794
I googled what the typical load capacity of a deck is, and the answer seems to be that about three and a half feet of snow is a typical minimum building code. Though that’s for a wood deck and I’m pretty sure the concrete deck this house has is built to a much higher standard. Still, the snow is easily over 3.5 feet. It higher than the railing on ghe deep side. Plus I wanted to play in the snow anyway.
Didn’t get much further than that as I had to save my energy for the driveway.
At least you don’t have to shovel it off the roof. ;)
Thrag
5796
No doubt. Fortunately the winds left little on the roof. The new snow on my road varied from maybe 5 inches in a couple of places where the wind scraped it off, to a few inches over the top of the blower where it was deposited. More the latter than the former.
Cutting the pioneer path back to the road was slow going. Worse than the first two falls. There wasn’t even the impression of a road from what I had cleared before. The wind completely reshaped the landscape. I think I’m going to put some snow stakes along the edge before next winter. Fortunately I’m familiar with about how far from the hillside the road lies so I only went off the edge into some sagebrush a couple of times.
While I was making my way down to the street a big suv stopped on the street and watched me for a bit. I probably look a little odd. My road winds around a hill. You can’t see the house from the street. The lots north and west of me are undeveloped and everything east is national “forest” land (despite being sagebrush desert). It likely looks like I’m blazing this undersized snowblower trail from nowhere. The windblown landscape left no indication my road even exists. The number sign by the street is still buried.
After a bit he hopped out and bounded through the snow up to me. Asked if I needed help. Since he watched me for some time as I pushed that initial path though one of the big drifts I think he sensed my dedication to man vs. nature narratives. He opened with “you look like you got it under control here but…”. I did thank him but didn’t even ask about the rate. He had one of the big honda 32" blowers that I’m kicking myself for not buying over the summer as I told myself I should do last winter. He went off to find a less dedicated homeowner.
This is actually a reoccuring theme. After a big storm people with various equipment from blowers to bobcats roam the streets looking to help people dig out. Usually for cash, though sometimes for recreation. My first big storm a guy in a pickup with a bobcat on a trailer watched me make my path from nowhere through the snowy desert for a good 20 minutes. When I got close enough to the street greeted me with a yippie-cai-yay and offered to knock down the ice wall the plows had left for free (as a loss leader) after digging out a neighbor. That offer I did take, and repaid by having them up for a beer.
(Sorry for dominating the thread as of late. Clearly I love both snow and monolouging.)
A little bit of insanity up north
Snow finally hits the east coast, chaos ensues.
Thank god for my heated seats. But my car is running cold these days, so the heater’s not working, so I did NOT enjoy the 5 degrees F weather this morning. Windchill was -7. Also I dropped my gloves in the coat closet, so they’re hiding in my wife’s shoes or something at the bottom of the closet somewhere. So no gloves.
Yep the cold weather sucks, single digits are not fun. Also doesn’t help that wfh causes people to drive less.
My battery died twice in early January, finally had AAA out to replace it. The original only lasted 42 months.
Bomb is coming for us north easterners.
