Jan 13, 2014 Finally - Snow!

Our porch Sunday morning.

Deep, sculpted snow by the woodshed.

Friday 1/10.  It was 28 and mostly cloudy this morning.  The wind took all day to calm into a light breeze, then completely disappeared by sunset.  Our high for the day was 35.

After getting up at 8:00 am with only 3-4 hours of sleep, I posted my blog; fed the dogs; talked to Sandy; and was snuggled back in bed by 9:30 am for a couple of hours.  Then I was finally ready to face the day. . . or what was left of it.

JB worked on my old computer, taking a lot of programs off of it, as I want to use it strictly for genealogy.  I worked on getting my genealogy files organized and little bits of information where they belonged.

We watched Django Unchained this evening, which was a bloody, Tarantino hoot!  When it was over, we realized snow had been falling for a while.  Big, beautiful flakes.

Saturday 1/11.  Sometime during the night the snow flakes had turned into rain drops.  The ground was mostly brown.  The wind had picked up again and it was 29 degrees.  All the ice (which I had hoped had melted with the rain) was still out there, and the sky was mostly clear and sunny.  I have to remember that the first few weeks of January are usually like this, only there is often much more snow on the ground to begin with.

I worked on my genealogy, both on the computer and organizing my papers.  I tend to get immersed in memories when I do this and nothing else gets done.

Dark clouds moved in and by 1:00 pm tiny hail began falling just after JB and the dogs left for a hike down our driveway to check the status of the road.  Within 15 minutes the tiny balls of ice turned to tiny snow flakes being blown about by the wind.  By sunset the flakes had grown and were really stacking up on the ground and trees.  The wind had picked up later in the afternoon and by bedtime we had 3" of snow on the porch.  JB had to really push to get the door open.  Our high for the day was 29.

Sunday 1/12.  We awoke to 6" of snow, 22 degrees and a mostly clear sky.  The wind was still howling and the southwest side of all the tree trunks were white.  Our porch and everything on it are white.  Lots of work to do today.

JB was out of bed at 7:30 am, having to get dressed right away and go clean off the panels.  The wind had taken care of most of that, but then he shoveled a path to the outhouse.  It is a wet snow, so it sticks much better to the ice, but we still had to be careful.  He could hear the avalanche control canon booming on Mission Ridge.  Jesse must have heard it too, as he did not want to go out of the house with them.  In looking around, we obviously were on the north side of the storm.  I don't think Larry and Elsie got any snow!

After washing the dishes, we started up MAX and JB drove us down to our rope gate that we put across the road during hunting season.  It's about 1/2 mile from the house.  The dogs had a great time.

After lunch JB drove all the way down to the main canyon road by himself to check it out and flatten the snow.  Someone had already plowed that road, but we can still take MAX down, hopefully all the way to Larry and Elsie's on Tuesday.  It will all depend on whether or not we can get from their house to the pavement without chains and what the weather is like between now and then.

The wind blew most of the day, still sculpting the snow.  In some places it comes almost up to our knees, especially around the woodshed.

Larry and Elsie drove up for a visit this evening and had a very nice visit.  Hadn't seen them since New Year's Eve.  They only received a dusting of snow and it had been in the low 40's at their place today.  They have been able to drive to the pavement without chains for a couple days now.  Our high was 32 which came at 9:30 pm.  Between that and the wind, don't know if we'll have any snow left in the morning. . .

Monday 1/13.  It is still 32 this morning and much of the deep snow is gone but the ground is still mostly white.  Looks like we'll be taking JB's Jeep down the mountain tomorrow instead of MAX.

Thought for the day: If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand.  Milton Friedman