Snow Day

I figured what with all the hype on the news about our "crippling" snow storm, I'd show you what really happened, at least at my house, which is the only place I've been since Thursday. It appears that conditions on our mountain roads were bad enough to curtail travel for a day or so to all vehicles except TV news trucks, complete with the on-camera talking head who drew the short straw. They had to talk it up big time to justify the expense, I guess, but our local merchants loved them in the absence of regular visitors. I'm surprised they didn't end up taking pictures of one another!

Here's 'before' taken last week just before the storm:



Here's yesterday after the storm:



See? No big deal.

And one of my faithful assistant Tami, who made sure nothing edible that came out of the discharge chute of my snowthrower went to waste:

Click pics to embiggen

It was a good storm, but nothing out the ordinary for around here. Cleanup of the driveway was easier than usual just as a matter of blind luck and timing - the town plows had the courtesy to berm me in before I plowed out. There's no feeling like clearing the driveway, getting inside where it's warm, taking off your snow boots, getting your wet clothes in the dryer, and settling back with a nice cup of hot chocolate, going 'ahhhh' a time or two, and just then hearing the 'clankety-clank, scrapety-scrape' that means you have to suit back up and clear a berm before it freezes solid. See my take on berms from last winter.

Folks elsewhere in California and Nevada suffered a lot worse than we did. We had kind of a normal snow storm. They took it in the shorts. We had three or four little power outages, the longest lasting about fifteen minutes, and the shortest just long enough that I had to grit my teeth, cuss, and reset the little-green-number clocks and restart the 'puter.

Folks pay big money to come up here and play in the snow in our winter wonderland. I just step out my front door.