Afterwards

As of now, I’ve cleared our driveway (most of it anyway- there’s only so much room to put that much snow) and front walk. It took me 3 hours to get that much done. Part of that is because are driveway is fairly long, part of it is because there was a lot of snow. And, frankly, part of it is because CONN DOT plowed the top of our driveway in and I had a very dense 3 foot tall, 30 foot wide wall of snow to push through. I wasn’t happy with that but I understand the plow guys have the same problem I do- there’s only so many places to put the snow.

There really aren’t words to adequately describe the scene here. I’ve seen a few references to the tried and true “Winter Wonderland” but that’s only true until the clearing starts, then it’s more like “Hell frozen over.”

As I type this, skies are clearing and the Sun is poking through a bit. The temps have warmed to the mid 20’s and the house is nice and warm with the fire running. My soaked clothes from my earlier snow-clearing are drying so that I can go out and clear our deck next.

Speaking of which, here’s what it looks like:

That’s our Weber Smokey Mountain on the left and our Weber gas grill on the right. The WSM stands about 4 feet tall, normally. It’s boosted up a bit by a large flat rock I have under it to protect the deck from the heat. For that matter, the top of the deck railing measures 42 inches from the deck surface.

Of all the pics in this post, this one probably gives the best idea for how much snow there is. That’s the path I kept clearing so I could take pictures for my Blizzard of 2013 page here on the site.

I mentioned our driveway up above. Here we go:

The before shot is snow that’s basically a foot deep or so for the main portion of the driveway. I’d already cleared it once last night to make today’s clearing a little easier. I’m glad I did. That ridge in the snow on the left of the first picture is the unplowed snow line. It matches up with the wall of snow on the left in the after picture.

Speaking of our driveway, it has a rather unique feature: a large rock set off to the side. It stands about 3 feet tall. Here’s a picture of it:

That’s the rock in the foreground, smack in the middle of the picture under the tree that’s bent over due to the weight of the snow on its branches. The covered portion of the rock is at about 3 feet. Not the biggest of drifts, but impressive none the less.

Here’s our front walk, before and after:

The piles on the right and left are probably 4 feet high.

If you look closely in the Before picture, there are some twiggy things sticking out of the snow. Here’s a slightly better shot of them:

See them? Those little twigs in the foreground? Those are the branches of a Japanese Maple. It’s a little over 2 feet tall.

Here’s a shot of the front of the house:

That lower roof over the front porch looks like I might need to do something about. The upper roof doesn’t look nearly as bad though. I assume that’s because it was exposed to the wind more and didn’t pile up to quite the same degree up there.

Finally, something fun. Here’s Dog2, our male German Shepherd. He’s leaping up at snow the boy has tossed into the air. As many times as someone will toss snow in the air, he’ll leap to snap at it. Just don’t stick your face in there.

We had similar conditions a couple of years ago, believe it or not. But in that case, we had 2 storms come through and dump on us on consecutive weekends. While both storms then were pretty impressive, they weren’t this one.

It’s not unusual for us to have rain come through that dumps 2 or three inches on us. I’ve often wondered what such a storm would be like if it fell in the form of snow. Now, I know.