Still coming!

March 2, 2007 (5:40pm)
29º F, light snow, W wind 3 mph.

Good afternoon,

When I turned on the computer and brought up the radar site this morning at about 4:30 A.M., it looks very much as it does now, some13 hours later. The screen is filled with blue and white representing snow over all of Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. It has been snowing steadily, just as the radar has shown for the past few days. Today the snow has been much lighter then in the past, but we remain under a winter advisory for a time yet. We have gotten about 3" of snow today and I really don’t know how much rain fell last night. I really think the rain, reported by the media as I didn’t stay up to look for it, was really very wet snow here. Compacted things some.

Many schools delayed opening a couple of hours this morning in this area. Many schools in the north central part of the state and upper Michigan were closed all day. The rain did fall in some areas and really messed up the roads there. The real problem is the location of the low pressure area. It has been over the center of the state and is now finally moving east, causing the wind to shift to the west after being from the east for most of the past few days. The low was nearly stationary. Lots of electrical outages west and north of here also.

Since the snowfall is not huge today, we are taking an "R&R" day for our sour muscles. Not much real physical labor done today. Margriet found that she had snow shoveling muscles she had never used before or at least to the extent she did the other day. I found that the muscles used to shepherd the White Spitter are different than those for the snow shovel. Now I have two sets of muscles some sore. Nap time was rather enjoyable too.

The first picture is our ramp from the deck when I went out to shovel for the first time after the big snow. The branches of the cedar normally are above my reach. If I were to walk down the ramp, I would have to keep my head about the height of the hand rail! I shook the snow from them first, then did some trimming as long as they were in reach. The second picture was taken during the first shoveling. The blade of the shovel is about 14" high and the snow about 4" above that. More was to come and it got deeper. It is along way to the road from the house - longer with 18" of snow on it!

This snow storm has set a number of records. Not only that, but it has brought our near snow drought to very close to our normal totals for the year. Seems we have received nearly our normal snowfall that should have started in November in a very short time. The storm is still hitting the Dakotas now. Our friends Sue and Don are getting higher winds and poorer conditions than we are. I have been watching the road reports and radar out there.

Margriet did a load of laundry today and started the starter to make some cookies tomorrow. I managed to build a new pot of soup. This time I made it almost totally from dehydrated vegetables, only adding a can of diced tomatoes and some sliced up bratwurst. Turned out not too bad! For supper, Margriet pulled some pasties out of the freezer and made some mushroom gravy to go with. They are still good and I ate too much again. Boy we sure eat good around here.

Much of today I spent re-doing our file cabinet. We are switching over from the standard file folders to the hanging folders. We picked up a box of them sometime ago, but needed more so picked them up the last time we were in Green Bay. We still need more. Did manage to get rid of some "stuff" that doesn’t apply anymore to our needs. It is amazing how much Medicare publishes every year. I threw out over an inch thick pile of books from years past. I haven’t been on Medicare that long! It is a giant increase from the time I was in the insurance business. All I had to haul around and give out were pamphlets, 5"x8", of about 35 pages. A far cry from the full-sized thick books of today. Glad to see the reduction of paper statement in them yet though! :-)

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><