Late breaking news...

Taken Saturday before the latest storm hit. This 1/2 mile from our home.

Route 109 widening secondary roads from the last hit.

SPRING may have come early to parts of the west, but down east... it looks like global freezing!

Yes, right on schedule every three days a blizzard blows into our little Island. The latest began Sunday morning and is still going today.  Harsh, cold winds blowing snow into massive drifts once again.

Taken Sunday night from our bedroom window.

The question on everyone's lips; "When will this end?"

Blizzard in full swing.

I sit here on another Monday morning, there will be NO school today.  Few business' open and for us our here on rural PEI, another day or three of snowed in roads.  Last week we went for 6 days without being able to drive anywhere, but fortunately we were able to get out and do a grocery run at least Saturday last.  As it looks out there today, it may be the last for another week.

Driveway at 9 am this morning.

Kids have been out of school this past 2 months nearly as much as they've been in! On the bright side, we have had no significant power failures, last year about this time a broken pole did not get replaced for 4 days, the utility telling me every day that I phoned in that the problem was a switching station in a nearby location.  As I had for several days I repeated to them that there was a broken pole down on our access road and finally after four days of calling, they sent someone out.  GUESS what... the pole was broken and lines down.  They had a new pole up within 2 hours and once again we had power restored.

Anna walking out to County Line road

I took some photos through our window late last night and ventured out this morning into a 'gale force' wind that had blown the snow into 10 foot high drifts.  I came back into the garage my cheeks rosy red and made 'the call'... 

Wind still howling!

County Line road looking north.

"Hi Diane... whenever the roads are plowed please send Donny by with his tractor mounted blower, my place looks like the Grand Canyon out there!"

County Line road looking south.  It's 1.3km to Irishtown road our route to survival.

Looking back down the driveway.  The civic sign is 14' above ground level! The 'official civic sign is 6 feet under!

Flashback

JUST come back from a walk down our snow mired County Line Road.  It looks like a normal mid January, not late March. Narrow drift canyons, barely a lane wide, so much snow!



I thought I would break the mold and do a few little blurbs on a past motorcycle rides, kind of get all of us OFF the heavy winter we've experienced and may yet still. 

For my western friends, those that have been experiencing record heat waves for this time of year, I'm soooo happy for you!

Baja sunrise

Playa Los Cocos/home

Riding in the Giganta mountains

Sunflower fields Hungary

The Dolomites northern Italy

T 72 Russian tank

Italy Railway overpass

Very pretty 250 RT circa 1970's model

European poppy fields

The Pyrenees Spain

Walled fortress and village France

Alberta back roads

Elbow river west of Calgary

Friendly Rocky Mountain sheep Highwood Pass AB

Red Deer river Forestry Trunk rd

Adventure scooter PHX AZ with supplies

XT 350 overlooking Lake Pleasant

On the way to Painted Rock AZ

Road/Trail Bradshaw mountains.

 Canso causeway Cape Breton
 

Fortress Luisburg NS
 
V Strom French River PEI

DT 50 on the Sea of Cortez

Hibernation

I wish I were writing about some crazy motorbike adventure ride I was doing in recent weeks... but I'm not.  Instead I'm writing about some crazy zany snow clearing hard labor!

compacted drifted snowbanks

Strange strange winter weather.  Virtually NO snow until mid January and since then almost weekly blizzards sometimes thrice during the week.

Last time we were out of our home anywhere was Saturday the 14th.  Brenda and her compatriots were in C'Town for a panel disillusion on electoral reform both in PEI and Canada.  I went along with my still and video cameras to record the session.  A strong turn-out as it happened and the lecture room at UPEI was well attended.

That bank you see by the trees is the drift straddling County Line road

The next day the scheduled blizzard hit.  It snowed and blew all day Sunday and Monday. I finally got out about 6pm in gathering twilight to begin the job of whittling down the new snowbanks.  By 7 it was too dark to work and in truth I wasn't really in the spirit, the going was tough.

Tuesday during a very bright and sunny day I surveyed the situation and called Donny Cole my local motorcycle riding tractor driving snow blowing neighbor.  Of course at that time there was no chance of him arriving anytime soon, you see, DC lives on Irishtown road the main route into Kensington and beyond but our own access road, the County Line road had not been plowed and showed no signs of any activity.  I literally whittled away at the 5 foot high drifts working until noon and again in the afternoon after a lunch and Tylenol break.  My back was killing me!

you could create an igloo out of this stuff

By evening I had shoveled, blew and pushed as much as I could do and had a passable driveway although the plow had still not made it in this far.  I was told by one of the neighbors that they got in to within 1/2 mile from us but three of us were still stranded, they simply could no get through any farther and had retreated to bring heavier equipment having been stopped by a 12' high snowdrift.  There was no point in Donny coming this way he would have been hard pressed to attempt an attack on that kind of snowbank.

It was Wednesday morning before a plow got through and it managed to clear a very rough one car track through to the hill where they quit plowing, this being a Heritage road and all. Out I went again to clear what the plow had deposited in my drive but the Big Bear could not budge the hard bank and huge lumps of snow the plow managed to leave.  By this time I could see Donny at my nearest neighbors and before long he had arrived.  Over the next hour he attacked the hardening compacted banks of 'water' and succeeded in widening my driveway by several feet.  By the time Donny was done and I'd brought my equipment inside it was already beginning the next go round.

view from the top of my driveway after 6 hours of labor.

It's now Thursday and we are snowed in yet again!

This morning I see I will be back on the quad and blower clearing once again the newly deposited white stuff.

To top that off, another larger blizzard is forecast for the coming weekend, which of course is the day after tomorrow.

Like I said... I wish I were writing some MC adventure story...

View from the bottom

Old Man Winter

Truly a winter wonderland.

Strange brew... 

There was one serious snowfall in December shortly after my return, followed by  a Green Christmas.  Likewise in January.

In fact our first "real" blizzard didn't occur until late in the month.  Since that time, in the 33 days past, I have had to clear the driveway 17 times!

That's right, seventeen!





Let me put this in perspective, typically I don't bother breaking out the motorized gear unless I have at least 6 inches on level ground and drifts of a foot or more.

Donny helping out.

While sometimes, as in the first three days of this week, little snow has fallen, but with high winds blowing what did, that created drifting 2 feet or higher requiring either blowing or plowing or both.

A week ago I had my local tractor/blower guy come in and blow back some of the accumulated drifts that were as much as 10-12 feet high.  Drifts that I could no longer blow over while driveway clearing with my own blower.

Widening the Heritage designated

County Line road.  Not plowed beyond this point.

During this 33 day cycle, we have had double digit school cancellations and of course that does not include weekends.  We have sat behind a snowed in County Line road several times for more than a 24 hour cycle and in a couple of cases into 2 days. 

Long time friend Rusty used to quip before we moved, "what are you going to do on those days you can't move?"

My answer then, "throw another log on the fire and read."  Well we don't have a fireplace but I have done a heck of a lot of reading.

For much of the last 33 days our access road has been barely wide enough to drive and in fact route 101, the Irishtown road has had a single lane for more than half this period.  Only in the last week has our CL rd been widened by a massive snow-blower to 2 lane width. We hear weather broadcasts telling us this is more snow accumulation and colder temperatures that all last year (which began in earnest in November and continued into April.) In fact some reports say this is the most snow and longest running cold winter in recorded history.

There has been so much snow on the ground that even riding the Polaris hasn't been an option, not that I've been much in the mood after spending so much time shoveling, pushing and blowing!

Plowing stops just beyond our neighbors driveway.

                                                                           

Spring... is only 16 days away... yeah right, maybe on the calendar it is.