The snowstorm was a dud

All last night the wind raged and howled as snow came down at what seemed like a rapid rate; but even as the snow was falling it was apparent that the storm was more or less a dud. Most of yesterday's snow melted on contact with the roads and the driveway even as it piled up on the old snow in the yard and appeared impressive. And when the snow did stick it insulated the roads and driveway so there was a layer of relatively warm wet under the five or so inches that actually did accumulate.

Last evening Linda and I had a moderately exciting drive back from Sam and Deb's house at about 9:40. By then there were a couple of inches of snow on the roads where the wind was drifting it across from fields in exposed areas. All in all we had less problems on the road than we did in playing pinochele with Sam and Deb. They beat us handily in the first game and were leading heavily in the second when we decided we had better leave. Debra had an amazing run of luck with her cards. It seemed that neither she nor Sam could bid without the other having eight or ten meld and a couple of aces. I don't think they went set more than a couple of times and they took most of the bids.

This morning the snow looked impressive while it was still coming down; but when I went out at about noon to plow I was able to do the driveway in two passes.

I just returned from a trip out to the post office and the gas station. The roads were already simply wet since the sun has been out. And, thankfully, all the essential services, like the gas station and the tanning salon were open as normal.

There's something to be said for snowstorms at this time of the year. The sun is high enough to clean things up pretty quickly once the snow stops. We're hoping that Mark and Linda L were able to get their driveway plowed because we're planning to meet them for dinner if they can do it. The plan is to go to The Texas Roadhouse, which we've been wondering about for years as we've passed it on Route 422 going back and forth to the Ballroom of High.

We deserve steaks tonight because yesterday we ate pretty healthy beef barley soup that I made. And, on Wednesday we had only a light dinner because we needed to get out of here pretty promptly to go up to Pottstown for our Tango lesson.

Speaking of the tanning salon, Alex called the other night to tell us that those SOBs down in Washington are trying to tax tanning. It seems they were going to tax botox treatments and boob jobs; but the cosmetic surgeons, the Botox maker and the boob implant people must have been able to put together a fatter set of bribe envelopes than the tanning people.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2124186720091221

Who knew there were 20,000 tanning salons in the U.S.? Imagine how many wrinkle wranglers and boob ballooning surgeons there must be to outbid the tanning industry when it comes to bribing Harry Reid and the other corrupt Senators and Congresscritters down there in DC.

Is this a great country or what?

The new snow turned wimpy

Yesterday they were predicting two to five inches of snow around here; so I went out and more or less eliminated the worst of the moguls in the driveway. I also widened it just in case we really got a significant snow. All this while I was making Lobscouse for dinner.

The Lobscouse turned out to taste remarkably like Mom's stew, even though it was just meat, potatoes, onions and about a third of a can of left over LeSeur peas, all simmered for about three and a half hours after a brief frying of the beef and then the onions in a tablespoon of olive oil. Oh, and I also put in a couple of teaspoons of instant beef boullion, a tablespoon or so of Worcestershire Sauce and few small bay leaves. This was for a pound of beef cubes, three onions and about half of a five pound bag of potatoes. Mom always put celery and carrots in her stew. And she never put in a can of beer, which is what most of the Lobscouse recipes called for.

Next time I think I'll try adding carrots and celery along with the beer.

It's snowing pretty good again out there but from the forecast I doubt we'll get more than an inch or two of total accumulation.

We're finally getting the promised blizzard out there

It's been snowing pretty hard all day; but there wasn't any significant wind to speak of until an hour or so ago. As a result the big pine trees have branches arching down to the ground. And many branches have broken off, including the one that landed on my car. I had to cut it up with the loppers to get it to where I could move it off. The car seems okay; but there's no sense checking on that yet. We're not going anyplace tonight, and probably tomorrow either.

I plowed the driveway at 10:00 or so and got stuck a couple of times. Then I plowed it again at about 2:30 and got stuck again a couple of times. Dense and heavy wet snow. The snow hasn't been falling as hard since mid afternoon; but there are probably another few inches out there.

The tractor gave me a bit of a scare this last time I plowed. I got it stuck after quite a little session of rocking and ramming a stubborn pile of compressed snow. So I had to get off and shovel out the wheels a bit. The upstart was that when I got back on it revved up revved up, but the wheels wouldn't go in either forward or reverse.

It took me a while to figure out that I had knocked the master transmission knob that hides down under the seat from the turtle setting into the neutral range. I've probably only shifted that master setting four or five times in the 24 years since we've had the tractor. The only reason to touch it is when you want the rabbit setting for going on a road, not that it goes all that fast on the rabbit setting.

We have plenty of wood in the garage and food to last for as long as this global warming keeps hurling itself at us.

The wind is really whipping out there now, but I think the snow is too heavy and wet to drift much.

A near run thing

We woke to a winter wonderland here. Snow drifting down during the night had all the tree branches deep covered. Very picturesque, except for the bamboo grove down by the garden, which is a mess, most of its tall stalks weighted down to the ground helter skelter.

Fortunately I decided to walk out to get the Times Herald and discovered that the beautiful scene was very deceptive. A moderate sized branch broke off the big pine tree behind the garage and fell on my car; but it doesn't seem damaged. I'll get to that later. That car isn't going anywhere today.

Six inches of very wet heavy snow on the driveway is harder to plow that fifteen inches of dry powdery stuff. So I decided to plow ahead of the new snow that's expected to fall all day.

I got stuck twice pretty good before I could plow down to the gravel and churn it up enough to assure traction. On that first pass the plow was pushing a ten or twelve foot thrust of snow ahead of the tractor, until it lost traction and left a big curl of compacted wet snow blocking the driveway. It's fun plowing then; because the only cure is to put on the seat belt, back off, and hit that pile at ramming speed until you break through.

What a great tractor John Deere made for us twenty four years ago. Over the years I've abused the thing in virtually every way possible and it just won't break. The snow is now falling at probably an inch an hour or more, and its supposed to get windy later.

I think I'll make some hot chocolate and sit by the woodstove. My sweatpants were soaked by the time I came in so I have them hung on a chair by the stove to dry. Don't worry. I'm wearing my camouflage long johns, which almost look like normal pants.

Perfect. I caught the hot chocolate just as it got ready to boil over in the microwave. Delicious!

In other news, I see that the U.S. Senate has cancelled today's scheduled hearing on global warming, and that Al Gore still refuses to take the energy use pledge. Why should we give any credence to people who run around shouting that global warming threatens the very survival of the human race but who continue to use energy like utter hogs? Al uses twenty times as much energy and generates twenty times as much CO2 as the average American family.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Pledge

Glorious snow, cannibals, missionaries and Rosebud

Linda thinks fifteen inches. I think more like eighteen inches. Both of us are too lazy to go out and measure the great heap on the picnic table. Eventually I'll have to go out there to plow. I'll measure it then, but of course I'll have to apply an adjustment to the raw data because it's a well known phenomenon that light drifty snow compacts down over time.

Linda reports that the post office has cancelled deliveries for today. Whatever happened to "neither snow nor heat. . ." Back in the good old days when Jas and Kathy were handling the mail this would never have happened.

Speaking of the good old days, The Beagle just got to New Zealand after a stop in Tahiti. And Darwin was going on quite poeticly yesterday about the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean yesterday while I was driving back and forth to the tanning salon. He was marvelling at the days and weeks of travel involved over the heaving trackless ocean to reach the little islands dotted around. He was also decrying the British naysayers he had heard criticizing the missionaries in Tahiti. He didn't quite point out that the naysayers would have been killed, cooked and eaten by the Tahitians in the days before the missionaries, but he hinted at it.

Meanwhile there are two kids down there by the bridge. Maybe seven or eight year olds, little enough so the snow comes up to their thighs. One of them is covered with dusty snow. Oh for the days when snow meant eagerness to get out there in it until the cold damp coming though your gloves and clothes drove you inside to warm up for a few minutes before heading out again. There are deer running around beyond the pond; but I don't think the kids see them.

Quite a lot of activity out there today. A teenage girl trudged across from Stratford toward Bridal Lane carrying a yellow sled a little while ago. She just headed back with another teenager and a younger girl in tow. They're probably going to try to sled down the sidewalks on Stratford. These days the local governments plow and salt too quickly and thoroughly to allow for proper sledding on the streets. Back in the good old days Park Avenue down in Trooper might stay unplowed all day, and when it was plowed there was still a good packed down base of snow to sled on, sometimes for several days. Those were the days when you had to have a plowed road to sled on because the only sleds around had thin metal runners.

Four deer just leaped and ran across the lawn from Bridal Lane to down by the bridge. Those little kids missed quite a sight, although on second thought the deer probably would have skirted well clear if the kids had still been there.

Gotta run now. The tractor calls. I should paint a name on the tractor. Perhaps Rosebud.

March came in like a pretty toothless lion

It's no doubt hard for you young people to imagine, but there was a time when eight or ten inches of snow would nearly paralyze this area. For one thing there were a lot fewer plows, and the back roads took much longer to be cleared. For another thing very few people had mechanical aids like snow blowers and such so sidewalks and drives took much longer to be cleared. For yet a third thing, there were a lot fewer working people who enjoyed the option of simply staying home and working more or less remote. And finally, if you've never driven a rear wheel drive car in snow you can have no idea how badly they performed relative to today's nearly ubiquitous front wheel drive cars.

Yesterday I plowed our driveway and found the roads nearly dry by mid afternoon. A similar snow twenty or thirty years ago would have snarled things up for days, not least because rear wheel drive cars would have been stuck half in and half out of every roadside ditch. The good old days were very often a real pain in the ass, and never moreso than when one would face the prospect of driving after a snow like we had yesterday.

Meanwhile, where's the global warming? Last year we had our first crocuses blooming outside the front door (it's a warm microclimate) by the end of February. This year the crocuses next to the front door were barely starting to poke their green stems above the surface before the snow covered them on March 2nd.

It's snowing cats and dogs here

It's snowing cats and dogs here, and it's even sticking on the side streets, the earliest heavy snowfall I remember; which puts me in mind of Nobel Prize wiener Al Gore (PBUH).

I wonder if Al is out on his yacht, or flying somewhere in his jet, or being driven somewhere in his Cadillac Escalade, or whether he is giving a song and dance show about global warming or climate change or whatever he's calling to nowadays.

I'm going to be writing a longer, kinder, post about Fat Albert very soon, for I have learned that he has joined me in the legion of the threatened, at least in one respect; so I hope he won't mind my taking his name in vain today.

Excuse any errors, no time to spell check or proofread this - must run.