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| Deep snow of January 2011 |
This is a poor substitute for the blog posting that I didn’t write last week. Most of you around the country know why. It’s the same reason you didn’t read it. We’ve all been outside, shoveling snow.
How about you? Have you dug out enough to come in from the cold and read a few blogs through eyes bleary with exhaustion?
See the picture (above) for the amount of snow that we have received so far this winter. Can you see me shoveling? You can’t? Neither can I.
It’s not even February yet, the traditional snow month.
And what about these storm patterns? Can NOAA answer the question why, in any given winter, you can set your clock by the regularity of the snow storms? Several winters ago, it was always Sundays and Tuesdays. This year, it’s mostly Wednesdays. No matter the year, the storm is always on the night before trash and recycling pick-up, so we can’t put it out. Does the Earth’s rotation generate some kind of weird meteorological circadian cycle? Is it sun spots or solar flares? Or is there a Divine Hand at work here, imbued with a quirky sense of humor?
I don’t really mind shoveling snow that much – it’s great exercise if you don’t whale at it – but this is becoming old hat. Of course, the looming issue with every storm is: where am I going to put it? Six-foot-high fences and a house enclose our yard, which is only about ten feet wide all around. I have already filled the neighbor’s yard (Thank you, Eric!) (throwing it over the fence – I’ve told him I’m stockpiling the snow for his children to make forts – I only throw the clean stuff over there), and one side of the front steps still remains unshoveled from the latest storm, because there’s no place to put it. It takes longer every time to shovel, because each shovelful has to be carried up and down the street, looking for an embankment low enough to make a deposit. The actual shoveling is minimal, relative to the transportation – I spend five times longer lugging the stuff around then hiking back to the mine face than I do applying the shovel. Talk about aerobics!
Then, of course, comes the subsequent application of ice-melt and sand. The tracked-in sand makes the entry to our house resemble beach-front property. Maybe I’ll put the entry on the market in the spring. Just the entry – we’re keeping the staircase.
