January 17, 2008: Snowstorm

A nice little snowstorm came through the valley on Thursday (Jan 17). It dropped a perfect 7-inches of snow. This is just enough to close the university (the public schools shut down at less than three inches). But it's not enough to pack down and make snow-blowing difficult. The Weather forecasters had predicted sleet and ice once the snowfall stopped, but the nasty stuff never came. Here are a few pictures.

This first one is taken right outside our front door during the snowfall. The large white things are the superhuge snowflakes. And these aren't the biggest of the storm, by far. Click on the picture to see the flakes better.


The snow fell for about four hours. Not bad. I measured seven inches accumulation some places, eight in others.

This was taken the morning of January 18. The street is all plowed, the driveways all blown off, and the sky is blue.


This is the back of the house, taken from the garage.


Since the neighbors kicked in and bought me a snowblower six years ago, I use it to blow off my driveway, and theirs: Ms. Craun, Ms. Lilly, Ms. Matthews, Mr. Kaye, and Daddy Bill. It's a lot of clearing to do, and I'm thankful I've got a snowblower. I couldn't do that much with just a shovel, especially since several of the driveways are well over 100 feet long, and Mr. Kay's is about 300.

Daddy Bill's driveway isn't paved, and this time, a rock got caught in the snowblower just as I was finishing up. It broke the shear pin that holds the auger tines to the drive shaft. So now the blower is out of commission until I can get it fixed. Luckily, it happened in the last three minutes of the almost-five-hour snowblowing exercise.


Below is the farm at the end of our street. this farm is gorgeous any time of year, and very picturesque. One of the things I like about where we live is that I get to see this view every day going to work. (Click on the picture for a larger version.)