It was one degree above zero earlier this morning. Unfortunately, that was our high temperature for the day. It’s all downhill from here down to two below at the moment. Plus, it’s really windy, so the windchill right now is about -27°. All the churches are even closing today. That’s gotta mean quite a loss of revenue what with Sunday being their big day. Pretty piss-poor planning on God’s part – not a very intelligent design.
We also got a shitload of snow overnight. I don’t know how much exactly – all I can tell you is that I had to go out and shovel the back yard so the dogs could get out and take a shit. I’d get the tractor out to plow it, but the gates are buried in snow and I can’t open them. Plus the post shifted on one gate and the with the ground frozen solid, the latch is jammed and I can’t open it. It’s not snowing at the moment but you’d never know it, ‘cuz the wind is blowing so hard it looks like a blizzard out there.
My sister lost power at her house for about 14 hours on Friday night into yesterday afternoon. The wind and snow took a tree down out in the middle of nowhere, and it took the power company about 12 hours to find it what with it being buried in the snow. Naturally my brother-in-law had a helluva time digging out a spot outside for the generator and then getting the damn thing started. Shit’s always a lot tougher in the middle of the night in the freezing cold.
It was good excuse to drag out the kerosene heaters, though.
They apparently don’t have the teevee, Internet, or pellet stoves hooked up to the generator circuits, though. Bit of an oversight. I have tv, Internet, pellet stoves, boiler, and pump all hooked up. Plus we have a couple kerosene heaters. Out here, you’re on your own so it pays to be prepared.
Of course, it dawned on me that I hadn’t run my generator in quite a while (not since last summer when some drunk chick took down a pole in the village and knocked out our power for 12 hours or so). I figured I’d better see if it still starts (and of course I had to shovel out a spot for it), and fortunately it fired up pretty easily (the battery’s been beat for a while, but four pulls got it going). Then I realized that I’d used up all my extra gasoline for the power washer over the summer, and the gennie was damn near empty. So it was off to the gas station to fill up the gas cans.
So now I’m prepared – which hopefully means there won’t be a need for it.
I hate the snow. We had managed a path for the dog and a path from the front porch and a bumpy icy but passable driveway. Now it is snowing, was snowing and will be snowing. Ugh!
Talking to my sister the other day, I heard that my neice may still be on track to move to S’cuse when her husband gets transferred. Even though they have winter in VA, I think they might be in for a shock next year. Not only that, I am sure she’s ever lived above the Mason-Dixon line and she definitely is not librul.
Now I have to go plant some garlic. My new place offers me some gardening options and my friends up here have knowledge and experience to help. I planted cardoon and brocolli raab last week and started an herb garden with oregano. There is already a large rosemary bush.
Not to worry, there are plenty of rednecks up here. And you get used to the snow. Kinda.
Enjoy your garden. I hope to see the ground again one of these days.
Can’t believe the snow you guys are getting. My bonus daughter goes to school in Boston and she’s been snowed-in. Classes have been cancelled off and on for weeks now. Wonder if they’ll give us a refund?
80 degrees here yesterday, 28 this morning and ice storm headed here tonight. The poor trees are getting very confused. A pair of pigeons broke through the wire mesh on a rafter over our back door. The male brings the female sticks and she picks and chooses what she wants to build the nest. All I can say is she is one picky-ass pigeon. And the poop! (The puppy discovered a new taste treat.) The rafter is too high for us to reach even with our ladder so I’ve decided to leave them to their nest and wait until the babies hatch. I moved a large umbrella next to our back door to help deflect the mess. Egads. At least I don’t have to shovel snow, though.
I assume we will see soil somewhere in Apil.
HeeHee!
Well, we have a new record low temperature for this date. -14 (so far). In fact, it hasn’t been this cold around here since 2005. Yesterday, there was a narrow band of lake effect snow that stayed over us pretty much all day long. I guess I’ll see how much is out there when I go out to plow – I know it was waist deep or higher when I plowed yesterday afternoon. Took me about an hour and a half to plow, and even with the cab, my hands and feet were frozen. There’s getting to be no place to push this stuff anymore. I’m tired of it. And there’s no letup in sight.
Yesterday was very cold. The thermometer has once again frozen, this time at 18 degrees. AND we ran out of oil and spent one very very cold night. Fortunately we live in a very small place and the oil truck was here by 8 AM and the house is getting warmer.
Guess I won’t complain about our ice-covered roads….
So, almost missed this ditty about our science-lovin’ senator who wouldn’t know a fact if it bit him the ass:
We have a room up by the garage that we use for storage. The thermometer in there showed about 20° this morning. The glass on the door by the garage has about 1/4″ of ice on it. Even the dead bolt latch lever is covered in ice. It was 10 degrees in my garage when I left this morning, because my wife apparently couldn’t get the garage door opener to work to close it. So instead of just getting out of the car and hitting the button inside, she left it open and called me (while I was getting ready for work) – and left a voice mail that I didn’t get until I went to leave about 45 minutes later. Hopefully it wasn’t open long enough for the boiler water lines and makeup water line to freeze.
The 10-day forecast shows one day in the next 10 where it will be above 25 – that’s Sunday, when they say it will get to a high of 30 after a low of 2 (and it will snow, of course). Other than that, only two days in th 20s – every other day lucky to get a high in double digits.
I’ve been looking at Roanoke, VA. They get 16″ of snow a year on average, and the coldest month has an average high of 45.6°. That sounds pretty good to me.
But you would be living in Roanoke AND Virginia.
Hey, that’s how bad this winter’s gotten around here.
I know how you feel PJ. I don’t know how Okat lives on the places she has lived. I don’t think I could do it. Surrounded by rednecks would probably make a bad winter seem a bearable alternative.
Well, any move I make is kind of predicated on my winning the lottery first and having enough money to buy a shitload of land in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a really tall fence and a state of the art security and video monitoring system to keep out undesireables and/or zombies (if it comes down to that – not necessarily the Walking Dead type of zombies, but the Christo-Fascist Zombie Brigade).
It’s the Christo-fascists-delusional-conspiracy-gun lovin’ idiots who are the scary ones. Take for example this legislature who voted overwhelming to do away with AP classes. Because we’ll be damned if people become intellectually challenged and actually vote against these dimwits in power. I’m thinking of putting an dart board in my office…..
You can’t blame ’em – there aint no ‘merican exceptionalism or God in them AP (which stands for Atheist Propaganda) classes.
Just accept Jesus Christ as your savior. And then kill anybody else who doesn’t.
Simple.
Lesley Gore dead: ‘It’s My Party’ singer dies of cancer aged 68