Epilog-
Winter storm, now blizzard, Elsa, was a historic storm. It set snowfall records in quite a few places. Supposedly Mountain set a state record for two day snowfall with 34”. I am quite sure that I matched or exceeded that. Most of my measurements were over 33 and many were in the 36” range.
It was indeed a blizzard. There were several stretches where visibility was under 100′ and several 3 hour stretches where I could not see ¼ mile.
The county and town plow crews are doing the best that they can. This was not a snow that they can just breeze by at 40mph and clear all county roads in a day. Not only was the snow deep and the road hard to find, the visibility was nearly impossible. Additionally as soon as they would plow the high winds would fill the road back in, especially on east-west roads.
To make things even more interesting gravel roads and driveways had the frost coming out of the ground, so somehow plow trucks had to push the heavy snow and not get stuck in the mud.
My neighbor Mike Decker ( Decker Services) cleared my driveway out yesterday saving me about 2 days work with the snowblower.
The house that I am remodeling to sell must have had a clogged furnace vent. During the storm the cameras showed that the temperature dropped into the high 40s when I usually keep it at 60. I was powerless to do anything about it with 3′ of snow in both driveways and the 8 miles of road in between. With the really strong winds yesterday the vent must have cleared because the temperature came back up to 60. I will be over there today hammering through the plow pile to see what was going on.
I was ridiculously ready for this storm but I still got surprised. I was ready with 4 days of generator gas, two whole house portable generators that were test run the day of, plenty of cigs, whiskey and beer, gas in the car, plentiful food, and multiple ways to access the internet.
The surprises were that I did not expect my typical generator spot to turn into a 3′ snowdrift. I will definitely need to work on that. I also didn’t expect the power to stay on. I guess that my car runs on premium this week.
The meltdown of this storm is going to get interesting. We are only going into the 40s for high temperatures in the near term so it will be a slow melt in sheltered areas. In sunny areas we will probably see bare ground by the weekend. The late March sun is brutal on snow. In sheltered areas the freeze-thaw-freeze cycle will likely turn the snow into an ice layer. Some traces of that ice layer will last well into May.
The snowmobile trails are not going to open. It is strange to see that with three feet of snow on the ground and a short season. There are probably a lot of reasons for that. I don’t know what they are so I will speculate-
The swamps are thawed and flooded. The woods will be a mess with the high winds bringing down trees and branches. The ground under the trail is thawed out and muddy. By the time the crews cleared the woods and broke a trail the sun would do its evil and burn off the snow on the sunny parts of the system.
I really don’t know. Again that is just my speculation.
Personally I don’t have time to deal with snowmobiling right now. I have a lot of snow to move before it turns to ice.
At the end of the story we made history the last few days. I’d rather make history by eating 37 chicken wings in 5 minutes but it wasn’t an A or B choice. Now it is time to do what we always do.. dig our way out, help our neighbors, and continue to live with a whole new batch of stories to tell.
Thank you for visiting!
RJB