Three Plus Two

Snowed In

The wind sounded like a freight train all night.  When we woke up this morning, a brand new landscape greeted our eyes:

We got 30+ inches of snow in less than 24 hours.  But this was no obstacle for the wind, which scoured some spots in our yard absolutely clean and piled up the snow in other places into six foot drifts.

Our detached garage...

The deck...

Against the back of the house...

View from Katydid's window...

And my favorite, the swing set.

(Note that there is no hill in front of the swing set.  The snow is really drifted up that high.)

This morning I had this conversation with my husband, who was going out to try and clear the driveway:

Me: Can you even get out there?

Him: I have a plan.  If the garage door won't open, I'll go out the front door and walk along the ledge up close to the house until I get to the driveway.  Then I'll jump down.

Fortunately, the garage door did open.  But then he lost one of the lenses of his glasses out there.  If you think finding a needle in a haystack is hard, try looking for a lens in a snowdrift.  So instead of going to work, he went to LensCrafters.  And other than that, it's business as usual here in upstate New York.

(Note: I added a photo album of all my pictures of the Valentine's Day Storm to my sidebar.  And I promise to write about something other than snow some time in the near future.)

We Wanted Snow...

We've got snow.  26 inches, and still coming down.  The wind is just beginning to blow, so measuring additional snowfall accurately is going to be tough from here on in.  But it's not supposed to stop snowing until around midnight.

I've been periodically snapping photos throughout the day to measure the storm's progress:

We should have moved this table and chairs into the garage last fall.  But now it's a convenient way to chart snowfall.  I took this picture around 9 AM.

By 11 AM or so, the table looked like this:

By 1 PM we had progressed to this:

And just a few minutes ago, I took this shot of the view from our dining room table:

 

The swingset is now, literally, half-buried:

And yes, Virginia, there is a car under there.

8 AM Storm Update

I have to admit it, I'm a weather geek.  So expect a few storm updates as the day goes on.

Right now, this is what it looks like outside:

There would be a road out there in all that.  The special weather statement from this morning indicates that we've been upgraded to a Blizzard Warning for the rest of the day.  By daybreak, the weather service estimated that we would have 2-4 inches.  Andy went out and measure a little before 8 AM(an hour and a half after daybreak, roughly):

He's measuring in a previously bare spot to get a better idea of how much snow actually fell last night instead of what's already on the ground.  According to our yard stick, 8 inches has fallen since 9 PM last night, double what the weather statement predicted.  Our cars look like this:

There hasn't been any wind yet -- that's coming later today, along with that big low pressure area that's moving up the coast right now.  When that storm merges with this one we're supposed to get our really big snow.  Along with some screaming wind.

So what are we planning today?  Well, Daddy's home, so I think it will probably be a real snow day.  We'll bake a cake and some cupcakes, drink some hot cocoa, check the Weather Channel, read Saint Valentine, Snow is Falling, and if the kids don't want to read any more of Blizzard!, I think I'll just have to read it to myself.  Blizzard! is about the Blizzard of March 12, 1888, which crippled most of the East Coast.  It began as a result of just what is happening today: two storm systems coming together to create one monster storm.  But the Blizzard of 1888 did not start as gently as this storm has.  It came out of nowhere, after predictions of rain and continued springlike weather from the Weather Service in Washington, and it was -- by all indications -- immediately disastrous.  We tend often to think of the weather -- particularly winter weather -- as something of a spectator event, but it was very different in 1888!  We'll also probably paw through our weather books for explanations of barometric pressure and other weather phenomena that people are talking about today.

This is one of the things I like best about homeschooling.  A snow day for us is very different than a snow day for kids in school.  It's like a giant learning laboratory has just opened its door right in our front yard.