Bogieblog

After the Thaw

We had about 36 hours of thawing, where the temps were near 50* and there was a nice wind during most of that time, The wind is critical for thawing as it moves the cold that the snow emits. These pictures were taken late afternoon on 2/24/21. The thaw lasted until morning of 2/25, where the temps were in the low 40's. But with the wind abating overnight, it doesn't look much different.

Most of the ice build up is gone from the paths, but there is still a bit left near the gate that leads to the big compost bin

This picture, shows the thawing that went on. Not that you can tell without a before picture. We had received 3-4" of snow the previous day and you can tell most of it melted because of the birdseed detritus below the porch. That is where I dump the seed shells from the small platform feeder on the porch rail, so that is at least a couple of days of leavings.

The thawing event was the first for over a month according to the local news.

Since about mid-day 2/25, the temps have been below freezing. Snow is expected this morning, then it should turn to rain as the temps try to get back up to the mid 30's this afternoon and the 40's tomorrow. We will be back in the deep freeze with single digit overnight temps for Monday.

Snow Mounds

Although we haven't had many largish snow storms this year (one 22", one 10-12" and maybe an 8"), there has been little meltage so the 2-4" snows add up. I have taken to shoveling the snow out about 10' from the garage to be able to clear the snow mounds with the snow blower.

Backing the car out of the driveway is a challenge, or an adventure, whichever way you want to look at it. This is the view out the window at the end of the driveway.

The berm beside the truck doesn't look as tall, but the view is deceptive since the ground the truck is on is on the high side of the slope.

Although I haven't gotten a recent picture of the mound of snow off the ramp, here is a picture from 2-16-21 where you can see a part of the ice I had to shovel off it from the sleet we had gotten while the Midwest was freezing in negative temperatures. That picture was taken before the second roof dump. You can see how high the berm is, in the upper right corner. That was prior to the additional 5" or so we got between Thursday night and Saturday morning.

We are supposed to see 40* in a couple of days, so hopefully some melting will be going on.

Kitty Entertainment in Winter

Last Sunday I was moving pellets from the garage into the basement. In order to be able to keep the door open, I put the youngsters in "jail". Spot had actually just gone in the pen to take a nap and when I closed the door, Rainey came to investigate. I opened the door back up and encouraged her to go in, and she obliged.

Rita of course, could be contained by closing the baby gate (if the guy ever decides to come by and install the new electrical outlets with new wiring, I could think about getting sheet rock to install on that wall :)

Yesterday the youngsters were intent on something outside, most likely birds. Spot is on top. I have never seen Rainey get up on the stove but she likes to stand on the register cover to look out when she isn't in one of the bay windows. She has to take a break every so often, take a walk around the room, then get back in position.

This picture was taken last Saturday, but it could have been taken a couple of weeks ago, or even yesterday. We haven't had a lot of snow; mostly just a 2-3 inches every 4-6 days. But, this shrub has not been able to shed what was dropped at the beginning of the month because it has never gotten warm enough to melt any of the white stuff.

Even on the few sunny days, the only meltage has been on the driveway closest to the street. Although not a snowy winter, I'm almost out of areas to put the snow, I'll have to get a picture of the piles in front of the house.

February Snow Storm

This has been a fairly mild winter. Despite the 22" of snow that we got in December, most of the storms have been dustings, although we have had a couple that were 2-4". It also has been pretty mild with only a couple mornings under 0*F, with those days usually reaching in the teens for the highs.At the same time, we haven't had much sun and most days have been heavily overcast, so even on days that have reached above freezing, there hasn't been much meltage.

Groundhog day we got a decent amount of snow at around a foot of the white stuff. The first two pictures were taken at 4:30am out the bedroom bay window, and the total at that time was 8-10" (as measured by my handspan). The 3rd picture was taken at 5:20 am, after I had started snow blowing

This is after I busted out of the berm with the snow blower

I had gotten lucky and the roof on the front of the house dumped shortly before I started snow blowing and I was able to use the snow blower to remove most of it (if it has set for a while, it takes chopping up like making igloo blocks). Howeverm the back side waited to dump until that afternoon. Lucky timing with this shot, the shelf of snow dumped 5-10 minutes after taking the photo. And even luckier, it vaulted the ramp and railing. For perspective, the eave overhang is 3' wide.

The next day I took these pictures of the snow still stuck in the crabapple tree branches (despite temps in the mid 30's)

the berm beside the ramp from both shoveling and roof dumpage. The snow had drifted while falling, so I had to shovel about 6" off the entire ramp before I started snow blowing - I didn't want that snow on there when the roof dumped (not knowing, of course, that the dumpage would vault the ramp).

We've gotten a couple more inches of snow thru the week and more coming tomorrow. Yesterday I got out and cleared water routes down tom and along the back yard as it was supposed to rain after snowing for a while. But the rain didn't materialize. Despite the mild winter, we haven't had any real meltage. I even still have a decent amount of snow left from December, so places to blow the snow in the driveway area are getting scarce.