Friday, January 17, 2014

More Of The Fluffy

We did receive more snow in Tuesday's storm though what's here wasn't necessarily fluffy.  Fluffy is how it does come down for the most part.  However, once it starts blowing, fluffy quickly morphs into hard and crusty......and the resulting deep is what follows in sometimes very random locations.

Once our cornfields were bared last fall, I followed the harvest with only one of the two snowfence/windbreak sections of bright orange netting that normally get erected to resist the wind.  The low section of the driveway was relatively drift-free but the upper end up here by the house had some drifts that were headlight deep.

I stopped at the mailbox up on the road just in case there was still mail in the box.  It was empty as I'd expected and then I crossed the road to get a read on the driveway's condition, at least the part of it that is visible from the road.  I expected worse and was pleased to see that the erected fence had done a very good job of controlling the drifting.  I knew, or anticipated with confidence that the section of the driveway right up near the house (w/o snowfence) would most likely be the challenging part.

It was......but I made it through.  Speed, momentum and aggressive snow tires can make up for conditions that are less than ideal.  I even made it past the section that turned me sideways last winter.

This was after I spent 2 hours with the shovel, broom and plow truck removing the "official" 6" of new snow.


This car hasn't been used since Tuesday so all of that packed snow remains beneath and up into the engine compartment.  Wheels out of balance are the worst part so tomorrow I'll attempt to loosen the ice that was formed on the warm metal

8 comments:

  1. Our snow usually stays "fluffy" for a while. And below a hard crust of wind blown snow you can usually find "fluffy" again. It looks like you are in for some sustained winter weather again.

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    1. It would seem that winter isn't over yet :) Last week's cold spell reminded everyone about what frigid feels like and we optimistically wanted to believe that it was over. According to the forecast, we're not quite over sub-zero.

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  2. Ah, the perks of living an apartment life… I don't even know how to use a shovel ;-)

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    1. Sonja, you may be surprised or not to know that I've heard about that phenomenon before. :) I'd like you to be the first to know that I'd find adapting to being without that first hand experience quite easy.

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  3. As pretty as snow can be, I really don't miss driving in it, or shoveling it.

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    1. I try to make both endeavors fun with a great deal of emphasis on the "try" part.

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  4. I wonder if they could find differences in the scans of brains of upper north staters and everyone else. There has to be that dark little spot of "masochism" in there. Sometimes it's probably mistaken for the dark little spot of "challenge".

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    1. I expect that you're right.....interpretation of that little dark spot open to interpretation. There were plans this morning to drive up to Minneapolis and the blowing snow was almost enough to make us change our plans but not quite. It actually turned into a bright, relatively-fresh-snow winter day.

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