Big storm, small problems

 The snow has come and, well, not gone. It has officially passed the three days guests are welcome. Above you can see the cars at the end of the snow fall. As a note, they were %100 cleared off a bit over half way through the storm just before midnight when we went to bed. That said, the Lady of the House and I are in a totally different situation than we were last winter. Last winter after storms like this I was out hand shoveling, and soon we were walking up and down an ice slide.


This winter, Left is what our driveway looked like by early afternoon the day after 32" of snow fall. Is that an amazing accomplishment? Not really, but it makes us feel good about how much we have adjusted and gotten better at living where we are. This year we did a lot of things differently than we did with last year's snow fall. For one thing, this time we have the monster snow blower which does a great job, even if it is painful to use. For another thing we did everything in passes. During the storm every hour or so I would go out and clear the deck and stairs all the way down to sweeping it clear of blowing snow after clearing the main of it with a shovel.

As you can see Right I had expert snow scattering assistance from the dog. He mostly stayed on the deck and paths I shoveled since by the end of the storm the snow was far over his doggy head. While he is a combination of a tank and a spring he doesn't like not being able to see where he's going while he plows around.

It wasn't long before by the time I had the deck clear of last hour's snow it was fully coated again. A bit frustrating, but it made a difference. Instead of a heavy exertion every couple hours, it was a quick 15 minute thing every hour. Finally at the end of the night just before bed I did a full clearing of the entire driveway, the entire parking area, and fully clearing the cars before bed. That way when I woke up in the morning I was only dealing with about 18" of snow at once instead of the full snow fall in the driveway all at once the way I did with our first major snow storms.  It is much easier to be willing to clear everything half a dozen times when shoveling the driveway isn't a four to eight hour task.

Unfortunately we don't have many mid storm photos because once the snow started coming down and the snow really started blowing around, we didn't want to risk the camera getting damaged. Left you can see the hutches after the first few minutes of snow fall.

Suddenly the snow picked up all at once. Bottom Left you can see a noticeable difference from Top Left. Both photos were taken within a short period of each other. When the snow really started coming down it was nearly impossible to see more than a few feet. When I was snow blowing for the end of night driveway clearing the winds were very high. It wasn't where I wanted to put the snow, I had no choice. I could point the chute in the direction of the wind, or the snow could be blown right back to where it was before the snow blower came in contact with it. Below you can see the view around 11:00 AM with rapidly falling snow highlighted against the trees in the background.

So, the rabbits. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get the photos with the full snow fall around the rabbit hutches to show everyone, but before the snow compacted it was up around the floor level on the rabbit hutches. The rabbits weren't amused at all. They weathered the storm healthy and warm, but not at all pleased. The babies seemed less concerned about it than the adults, and in fact, finally used (and destroyed) their nice new toy the ignored in favor of the cardboard box we gave them. The biggest problem with the snow storm was with the very high winds the feeders were filled to the brim with snow, and had to be cleared out. The private sheltered spaces worked out great for the adults, and the babies just huddled together in one warm mass. I should enclose at least one side for them so in the future they have more wind shelter.

One of the things I'm not looking forward to about the chicken coop is, I'm going to have to shovel out to it in storms like this. I'm also going to have to shovel out at least a bit of an area for them to chicken around in out of the hutch. More shoveling to enhance my redneck cross training fitness program.