The snow continued off and on all day on Sunday and was snowing hard when I got up yesterday. I was determined to not let the wind, gusts up to 40 mph yesterday keep me from snow play. My ski pants are too big, the weight loss since I last skied shows, but they have suspenders and over longjohns they were usable. Ski gloves, jacket, neck warmer, hat and hood, a sled in tow, I hiked to the top of the driveway to try to sled down. We did that a number of years ago after a heavy snow and ice storm. Not so much luck yesterday though. The snow was over my boots in places and my weight on the sled in deep snow did not make for good sliding. A walk back down to below the barn, I did slide down the hill toward the house, then tried to go down the hill on the opposite side of the house, again without much luck. Strong wind on loose snow sent tiny particles like needles at exposed skin, fortunately there wasn’t much of that. I tried, I quit.
This morning, the wind has died down, it is still only 27f outside. When I took thawed water and scratch grains to the hens, I threw down a thick mat of old hay in part of their run. One look out the pop door and they retreated back into the coop.
I decided to plow the driveway to thin the snowpack in hopes of encouraging some melt off as the sun has come out and disappeared behind the cloud cover off and on. I did a single pass down, just driving the tractor over the snow then used the blade for a single pass. It did help start some melt off as I discovered after putting all my ski clothes back on to take a walk up the nearly half mile to the paved road to see what the roads look like. I also discovered that my ski pants now fit over jeans, that wasn’t possible a few years ago.
It would be perfect for sledding right now. We did that 4 years ago with daughter and grands. It was such fun, but you had to be careful because at the bottom of the hill is a cattle grate over a creek.
After preparing and eating lunch, I did more work with the tractor and blade, widening the pass down as the blade is only 5′ wide and at an angle doesn’t make a car passable swath. If we had to get out in an emergency at this point we could, but have no plans to go anywhere today. Tomorrow is supposed to be in the mid 40’s and rainy, so we will have a slushy, muddy mess, but will be able to get out to deliver a birthday card and gift to the local grandson who turns 15 tomorrow.
Thinking that we would have this behind us for a while, they are now calling for either 2 light to mid accumulation snows later in the week or 1 mid to heavy snow depending on how the fronts come together. This is after a late fall forcast of a warmer than normal, wetter than normal winter. As hubby said, they got it half right.