After getting a whole bunch of snow early Friday morning thru Friday afternoon, it started raining. By the time I left for work at 5 AM, we had gotten 3-4" of snow. I don't know the total amount of snow we got, but by the time it had rained a while, and I got home about 4:30, we had 9.5" of totally sodden snow (measured off the trash barrels). Each tiny shovelfull was about 50 lbs (guess I dind't need to work out that morning).
WS had already been snowblowing for about 1.5 hours and had only gotten 1/2 the driveway done. He snow blowed a path from the deck to the stairs leading to the dog pen while I started shoveling the deck. After about an hour of shoveling, I had gotten about 1/2 the deck and the deck stairs done. The snow was so sodden that I had to bang the shovel against the railing to get the show off of every shovelfull.
While shoveling from the bottom of the hill to the dog pen, I was very gratefull that WS had snowblowed the pathway to the hill (usually I shovel most of it while WS snowblows other stuff). I had nothing to bang the shovel against to get the snow out of the shovel, so it was worse than shoveling the deck. I got enough of a path done that I could get the dogs to the house (the dogs, but the way, had waited patiently the whole time - without barking or whining as they usually do).
WS meanwhile snowblowed the paths inside the fence and dug out the gates and basement door. We called it quits and WS got his reward by going out on the sled for a while.
After our usual Saturday morning rounds, we started back up on the snow. I finished the other half of the deck, banged ice off the rock stairs to the driveway and to the dog pen, and widened the path to the dogpen. WS is still trying to snowblow the downhill side of the driveway. Although everything had frozen up last night, it is melting quite rapidly as the temps get near 40, plus it is sunny. However, leaving the snow to just melt is not an option as it would turn into about a 6" block of ice in a couple of days.
I, for one, could have really gone for all snow from that storm!
While the snowplow has been down, Dear Husband has been doing our snow moving, and he's had to let most of our drive go. We do the same thing you do, and focus on paths and sidewalks. When we returned from Florida, I shoveled a path to the bird feeders, and broke a path up the sidewalk. DH finished the job.
I'm surprised that WS was able to snowblow such heavy, wet snow!
Posted by: buffy | March 03, 2007 at 05:33 PM
I was very slow going with the snow blowing - literally a turttles pace (and one that isn't in a hurry).
Posted by: bogie | March 04, 2007 at 07:37 AM