Enough Already!!

Yesterday was a self-proclaimed snow day.

It had been snowing since Tuesday night. After class Tuesday night, I spent an hour and a half blowing 4” of snow from my driveway. By Wed morning there was another 3-4” and no signs of the snow stopping.

Turns out I wasn’t the only one who declared a snow day, seeing as only 2 people showed up at the office. Of course all the schools were closed across IA, southern WI, and IL. As the day wore on the city and county governments closed. Even the big mall in Rockford and O’Hare airport in Chicago closed.

Even though it was still snowing at noon, snow was knee deep in places so I decided to blow it while it was *still* blowable. The plows had been continuously doing the streets and managed to shove an 18-20” nasty mass of frozen gunk at the base of all the neighborhood driveways. I felt sorry for my neighbor to the south… She has little tiny snow blowers and was having a hard time getting her driveway cleared. I’m guessing she couldn’t get the “gunk” cleared from the end of her driveway seeing as she cleared everything but that. After clearing a path up the sidewalk between our houses, I cleaned the end of her driveway… and blew it back out into the street. My blower can practically throw snow all the way across the street! It took me a couple hours to clear all the snow (and by that time the parts I had done first were already getting covered again). By that point, snowfall had become heavier and blowing around, it was time to put the blower away.

Around 5:30pm, I went out again. Snow drifts were just as deep if not deeper than they were earlier in the day. I thought: Where in the world am I going to put all this snow?!? At this point, I’d used the snow blower three times. Up til that point, how many times had I used a snow blower? Ummm…. NEVER. So, three times and I’m becoming quite the expert at dressing to blow. I’d also learned by trial-and-error how to blow the snow down the driveway and off to the side in the front yard. Ski hill? Heck, now I have a mountain in my front yard!! 8:30pm, I finally walk back into the house after clearing all the snow, scraping the compacted residual snow off the incline, AND putting down salt.

I received a text message from bro #2’s friend/coworker (who sold me the snow blower) saying that apparently the snow blower worked pretty well seeing as my driveway was the best looking one in town. LOL… stalking me? He lives outside of town and would’ve had to make a special trip past my house on his way to work.

According to the National Weather Service, the 2007/2008 winter may be the snowiest since 1978/79! Right now snowfall totals are 56.5” and the greatest was 63.4”. We have another three weeks left during this climatological winter season! My area received at least 14” between Tuesday and Wednesday night.

I wish I had my camera handy when I took Celeste out to do her thing at lunch time. I had snow blowed a 5x5 area in the backyard for her to do her thing and all around it was at least 2ft of snow, including the bunny hill. She had jumped up on the BH and sat up there surveying the neighborhood like she was Princess Celeste! It was quite comical.

To give you an idea of how much snow we have, I took a photo of the HUGE piles of snow in the parking lot where I work. I parked my car in front to give scale.

Forecasters are calling for another 1-3" in the next day or so. *sigh*

(Is it spring yet?)