After the storm

The snow stopped a bit earlier than expected: final tally, 30 inches (75cm) more in some areas with the snowdrifts. Too much for a 3 year old to play in although I do plan on helping my daughter building her first snowman tomorrow. Time to dig out, which should take a while considering it took an hour to reach the sidewalk from the front door.

I'm now pretty happy I braved my general aversion for doctors and had an appointment last Monday. Not only have I gotten the best sleep this past week than the last 3 months, but thanks to my prescription pain meds, I don't feel sore from the 3 hours of shoveling today. Sweet!! Unfortunately the pills don't do anything to spare me from the bitter cold so I still had to 'defrost' in a hot bath afterwards.

There is plenty more snow to shovel. Our cars are still hidden under a thick coat of white stuff. Getting them to the main road will be an adventure. The HOA does have a snow removal service but it only covers the bare minimum: Make the parking lot passable and the mailboxes accessible. Each of the residents is responsible for the sidewalk in front of their house. Two larger tree limbs loaded with that heavy snow broke down very close by. Thankfully only minor damages resulted. The beauty of buried power lines is that we had no power outages during the storm.

We still have to hand dig up to 4 feet of heavy compacted wet snow and by tomorrow surely a quite a bit of ice since the current temperature is 19F (-7C) and will even go lower overnight. These are the days I wish we had picked a states further down south, or that we had a snowblower handy.

The biggest problem is that we have already run out of places to pile the snow. Standing on the side walk, looking into the front yard, the pile is 6 feet high !! Tomorrow is calling for creative solutions of snow disposal. The sun will be no help as the max temperature will stay just around freezing for the next few days. If you believe the forecast, we will even get a couple more inches of snow on Tuesday .

Total snow fall so far this winter 62.5 inches (158cm) - No more please!!