Settle in and let me tell you all about it.
Friday ... We had a beautiful sunrise on Friday morning. Made me think of the old rhyme: "Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning."
In preparation, we stocked up on anything that we needed in case we were snowed in for a few days. I made a quick stop at the grocery store on Friday morning, to grab the last couple of things that I had forgotten to buy earlier in the week. The weather soothsayers were warning that we should EXPECT to lose power, so we were prepared for that, too.
The snow was predicted to begin at noontime, and it did ... gently, at first. The first of my snow progress photos from the front porch was taken at 12:30 pm. I took another photo every hour as long as we had daylight. I also planted a yardstick in the front yard, to keep track of how much snow accumulated.
12:30 pm
1:30 pm
2:30 pm
3:30 pm
4:30 pm
5:15 pm
Friday evening and all through the night, the wind blew, the snow fell, and our power stayed ON.
Saturday morning. The wind was howling and the snow was blowing ... total on the Snow Stick at 7:30 am was fourteen inches. At 8:00 it was thirteen inches. All the blowing and drifting meant that it was going to be impossible to get an accurate reading of total snowfall, no matter where I measured, Oh, well.
7:30 am
11:30 am
3:30 pm ... blowing like crazy!
From time to time, on both Friday and Saturday, my husband or I would go out and shovel our porch and the front steps.
First, shovel ...
... then, sweep.
And the snow continued to fall.
Thank goodness for a very timely post that a friend shared last week on Facebook, with a genius idea to help with providing a place for Winnie to do her 'business' during the storm. We secured a small tarp to the ground before it started snowing, in a spot convenient to the back door. Whenever Winnie needed to go out, we shoveled and/or swept the snow off the tarp and peeled it back, exposing bare ground.
This tarp idea was a lifesaver!!
Sweep off any accumulated snow between turn outs,
fold back the tarp, and Winnie had bare ground so she could do her 'business'.
Ruby has never minded or had a problem with snow. She found that the snow in the area near the fence is shallower, and she runs out, does her thing, and comes right back. She's such a good girl.
At least twice during the day on Saturday, I saw our farmer neighbor from up the road ... out with his big John Deere, doing what he could to help keep our road passable.
Saturday afternoon, into Saturday evening, it kept snowing ... sometimes to the point where it was difficult to see to the road.
Despite the fury of the wind and snow outside, the humans and critters inside were warm and safe. Late Saturday night, the snow and wind finally stopped. It had snowed heavily and continuously for 35 hours (from 12:30 pm on Friday to 11:30 pm on Saturday.) No power outage ... for that, I am thankful.
Sunday, we woke to bright blue sky and the promise of a beautiful Dig-Out Day. The Snow Stick showed seventeen inches of snow, with drifts in places that looked to be twice that high.
View through the dining room window, with a sunbeam illuminating our barn.
The ridges and rolls in our flat front yard show just how much the snow blew and drifted during the storm.
We were a little bit ahead of the digging out, having kept our porch and steps shoveled and swept like we did during the storm itself. My husband headed to the garage to get the snow-blower, and our daughter and I started with the front walk and our cars.
The dry, powdery snow sent up quite a plume with the snow blower!
Front walk and steps, all cleared!
Next, we shoveled a path to clear the cars.
The bright sunshine soon melted any remaining snow on surfaces that we cleared.
He's still blowing snow from the driveway.
All of this activity kept Dorothy and Alice quite entertained.
With the steps, front walk, and cars cleared, I turned my attention to freeing the dryer vent ... which was somewhere down a half-flight of steps to the moat in front of our house, and underneath a five-foot snow drift. There's nothing like knowing that I can't do something (in this case, laundry) to make me obsess about wanting to do it.
The vent is down there somewhere, but the snow is so big and so deep and so tall!
Success! (green arrow indicates the vent).
After a lot of blowing and shoveling, which took us until mid-afternoon, we were completely dug out ... just in time to spend the rest of the day watching football.
Look carefully and you'll see our daughter in the distance, touching up the last of the snow on that end of our circular driveway.
This morning (Monday) dawned much like it had on Friday ... with a beautiful, but more gentle, sunrise. I put on my coat and walked to the street, taking in the unique atmosphere that comes with a clear morning and a thick coating of fresh snow.
Sunrise was mostly pink and purple this morning ...
... casting a rosy glow onto our house ...
... with beautiful, diffused light reflected by the fresh snow.
Hello, Moon.
We were very lucky during this storm, to have everything prepared ahead of time and no responsibilities outside besides the potty needs of our dogs. Our neighbors with horses and other livestock have some hairy stories to tell about keeping their critters safe ... there were even a couple of horse rescues. In the end, we all helped each other as best we could, and everyone (and every critter) were safe.