We endured one of the worst (not the worst) snowstorms of our 25 years here from Friday, December 24th through Friday, December 31st. It began with 3” of snowfall on the night of Thursday, December 23rd. The next morning I plowed the driveway with the tractor and cleared a path. The driveway is about 3/8” of a mile long, so this was a big job. It was still snowing and quite cold.
Saturday, Christmas Day
Christmas day saw another 3” of snow, but I was already ahead of the game due to my previous plowing.
I was able to clear the driveway adequately with the blade attached to the rear of the tractor
The snow was certainly beautiful
The dogs had fun playing in the snow
The sun came out in the afternoon, melting the remaining bits of snow on the driveway.
Sunday, December 26th
This was the day we got clobbered. Another 6” of snow came down.
The trees were covered with so much snow that many bent over and many branches broke and fell.
The deeper snow was harder to plow; it took me three passes going up and down the driveway to clear a narrow lane.
Monday, December 27th
This was the day when everything went to hell. We had even more snow; the total accumulation was about 13”.
The plowing became near impossible
Around 10:00 AM a branch somewhere broke and smashed into the power lines, cutting our power. This happens often in the winter; we’re usually at the bottom of the priority list because our power line only reaches a few people. So I fired up the generator and we were able to get basic power, although it wasn’t enough to get our heater running. So we burned lots of wood in the wood stove; the living room was comfy but the rest of the house was rather chilly, getting down to about 50ºF. Kathy was able to drive out and get all of our gas cans refilled. We now had 13 gallons of gasoline for our generator, enough for maybe a day and a half.
Tuesday, December 28th
The power came back on around 8:00 AM, much to our relief. We lost power again for a couple of hours in the afternoon, but it was quickly restored.
The snow was just too deep to permit much walking around.
The storm was pretty much over, and it stopped snowing, but now the cold set in. The temperature plunged to about 20ºF, which wasn’t too serious, but we still ran some water all night long to prevent the pipes from freezing.
Icicles
Wednesday, December 29th
Good news: it warmed up. Bad news: we had violent winds all night long, breaking even more branches.
Thursday, December 30th
Today was our 50th wedding anniversary, for which we had planned a gala banquet and celebration. Because of the snowpack, we had to cancel everything. We had spaghetti for dinner. But from this point on, the weather smiled and we no longer suffered any weather problems.
The Aftermath
After digging out, we began to survey the damage. There was a lot of it.
Lots of broken branches strewn over the landscape
Broken branches on the roof
A large pine tree was torn out of the ground by the wind. It took two other trees with it.
Here’s a pine that was bent over by the weight of the snow. I’ll use the rope to haul it upright.
It will take me weeks to clean up all the damage done by this storm, but we weathered it without too much trouble. It did consume all my time for over a week; I got no other work done.
