End of Holiday, End of Big Snow

It had been forecast that a snow storm would hit late Wednesday afternoon and last through Thursday morning. Terrible timing for those people traveling to be with loved ones on Thanksgiving.

Our snow started around dinner time Wednesday night, and we had an accumulation of three inches in one hour.

Oh boy! We were sure we were in for it. Then . . . the snow turned to rain. Ish. Talk about a wet, slushy mess. The temperature was just on the verge of freezing and we heard the roads were terrible.

That was the end of the snow in our part of our spread out county. Chicken Mama had all snow where we had mostly rain. She ended up with another 12" of snow added on to the 14" she had gotten recently. If my math is correct (which it usually isn't), she must have about 2+ feet of snow on the ground now.

Our neighbors are out of town for eight days but left their plow truck with us to use in case of snow. Early yesterday morning hubby went to plow out their long driveway and enough of their yard so it was easy to get to their back door entry. Then he did our yard area and driveway. It took him more than three hours of laboriously moving very heavy, wet snow/slush. Last night the temperature dropped to 4 degrees so he's very glad he did the work before the snow froze into a concrete-like mass.

The above picture and those below were taken in mid-afternoon yesterday after the rain had pelted the snow.

The yard and some of our apple trees.

Can you see by this picture that the pond was covered with a layer of slush? Inches of slush on top of very thin ice. So much for ice skating.

Our Thanksgiving Day didn't turn out quite as we had expected. The snow altered our plans because our daughter had those 12" of new snow to deal with before she could head in to our place. She cleaned her yard and house area and then called to say she was leaving with the plow truck and would plow a single lane down her four mile winter driveway on her way out. (No easy task when you're plowing 12" of wet snow.) Then when she headed home after a much shortened Thanksgiving Day here, she plowed her way back in widening the road.

She didn't arrive here until after three o'clock on Thanksgiving so we didn't have the long, leisurely day we had all looked forward to. It was still nice, although short. Very short. We were glad to get the call she arrived home safely last night.

So ended Thanksgiving Day for 2010. All in all, we've got a lot to be thankful for. Especially enough snow cover for insulation so that we don't have to worry about water lines coming into the house from the well freezing or bad things happening to septic lines going out!