We had a giant snowfall a day ago.
The forecast became increasingly unbelievable, beginning a week before at about a foot and by the morning of the blizzard rising to 2.5+ feet. Everything closed and we both worked from home.
The snow began Sunday before lunch, and continued for over a day, although most of the snow had fallen before we woke on Monday.
The last photo above was taken at first light Monday morning. The bird feeder remains under the snow as I write this, a day later. Since it’s going to remain below freezing for at least the next ten days I don’t expect to see it again for a while.
Official tallies of the snowfall range from 12.5 to 15 inches, but according to what I read measuring the actual totals was a challenge since many of them depend on volunteers that in some cases were unable to report. The tallies seem to vary wildly as well: a town not five minutes away from us is reported to have received over 5 inches more which seems dubious.
I cleared the snow three times. The first time with just a shovel, and then I used the snowthrower to clear the driveway just before dark on Sunday. This was quite a challenge since it was awesomely cold (below -15C) and I couldn’t stay out too long. When we woke on Monday it looked like I hadn’t even cleared the day before, since what seemed like at least as much again had fallen overnight. Without the snowthrower we would have had a mighty challenge indeed.
The photo on the left was Monday morning. Keep in mind that the previous afternoon I had already cleared the steps twice! There was so much snow that the usual method – just push it off the steps and patio – wasn’t an option since the snow level was higher than the patio. Clearing the steps is usually the easiest task, but yesterday it was a chore.
Luckily we didn’t lose power, and I haven’t heard of any serious disruptions from the storm. During the worst it seemed like everyone just stayed at home (the only vehicles we saw on our road Monday were ploughs).
I like snow but maybe this was a bit too much 🙂