Blizzard

View of our valley.

AFTER weeks of barely enough snow to shovel, we've been hit pretty hard this past few days. Trevor and I drove to N.B. on Saturday to pick a used KLR 650 at a Moncton dealership for him, 'Stretch' as I refer to him, sits that bike almost like a mini cycle! We barely made it back last Saturday in mid afternoon before the weather stated getting nasty.  That forecast called for 15-20 cm of snow but the wind was blowing so hard I don't think any of it actually hit the ground around my place.

Pretty near Zero visibility.

However, on Tuesday as we were hearing about school closures the white stuff began coming down in earnest.  It blew for the rest of the day and pretty much held out until the wee hours of the morning today.  School, once again cancelled.  The plow went by in the early morning hours clearing a little more than a swath of County Line Road. 

Not cold but certainly blowing.

 I waited until mid morning before going out to see what was up.  Well, turns out there was about 18" on level ground and where it had drifted, as much as four feet of snow.  I fired up my walk behind blower for the first hour, working methodically using the still strong wind to my advantage.  The little Cub Cadet was working pretty hard and as I widened a path about 8' across. I brought out the Big Bear.  Alternating between blowing, shoveling and plowing, it was still a 2 1/2 hour ordeal. 

The temperature was actually fairly mild only about -6C and much of the time I was working with only light gloves and sound protecting muffs on my ears.  There had been no traffic on our road and I suspect not much is moving anywhere except for snow clearing equipment.

Yup... my driveway is under there!

Speaking of which, the procedure is usually a plow truck and then later in the day a sanding truck goes by my driveway.  The plow did his turn very early but the sander just came through shortly after noon.  Surprisingly, at my neighbor's, he got stuck.

It took him about 30 minutes of alternating sanding and coaxing the unit a foot at a time.  He eventually was able to turn about and headed back on his rounds

Getting started at 9 30 this morning.

I watched from my window as the operator shoveled sand/salt under his rear wheels.  No point in going out, there was nothing I could do. 

Amazing what you can do with two small pieces of equipment and some time.

The visibility was near zero this through the day yesterday and into the early morning today as you can see by the photos.  Even now there is some light snow coming down, but given the lack of the stuff over the last three months, we take it as it comes. 

Took him a half hour to get unstuck.

I don't mind working the yard, its good exercise, the air is fresh and after being cooped up for two days, nice to get outside.