We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Weekend...

 I know this blog is starting to resemble the National Weather Service. Frankly, my life is starting to feel like it revolves around weather. In particular, snow.  But with three snow storms in one week, one of which has effectively shut down the entire state of Virginia for the conceivable future, it's hard to focus on anything else.

I had this brilliant idea of chronicling our record-breaking snow this weekend with a play-by-play here one the blog... you know: adding photos and updates every hour so you too could enjoy our "crippling storm," only without being crippled. I thought that might be fun on Friday to watch it pile up here, like your own private window from my house.

Like most things in my life, it didn't work out the way I planned. I took the pictures... I just didn't get around to posting them in real time. So here's the play by play – 36 hours late.

An hour before the snow was supposed to hit, I took a "before" photo of the driveway, thinking it would be a good gauge to follow.

It's not a pretty sight. The harsh winter has left the blacktop cracked and ugly, but it's beautiful to me because I SHOVELED that thing. That whole stinking thing. All 300 feet of it, along with the sister circle that curves around the front of the house to the left. By the time I took this picture a lot of the snow on the grass had begun to melt from the last two storms.

In fact, as the snow came down, I realized I didn't want to walk out in the blizzard to take the same angle, so I switched my position to a view from the front porch:

The crazy thing here is that this is actually a few hours after the snow started. It stuck to the snow already on the grass, but the pavement... not so much. I began thinking this was going to be a really lame snow after all. Surely a few hours of steady snow should net a bit more snow than this, right?

It's starting to build up on the trees, though, and if you look closely at our snowman in the corner, he's getting a little fluffier as well. Now we're talking pretty.

Except an hour or so after that I realize this idea isn't going to work very well, because the driveway... well, once it disappears it's really hard to tell how much is there. It's just all white. See?

So I switched tactics again and decided to use the fire pit in our backyard as a gauge. Of course, since I didn't get it from the beginning, it doesn't work exactly the same. This is after a few hours of snow. I think there's about six inches of snow on the ground (and a little less than that on the stone). The wall is about 18 inches high.

It started snowing at nine-thirty in the morning. It was still going strong after dark. In fact, late afternoon is when it became officially blizzard conditions. Can you tell?

It snowed all night like that, coming down at about 1-2 inches an hour, and when I woke up it was STILL snowing.  And the fire pit was gone.

Remember the snowman? Yesterday he looked like this:

Today, he turned into the Easter SnowEgg:

Isn't that hilarious?? My son thought the head fell off, but it didn't. It's under there somewhere. Notice where his stick arms are in both pictures and that will give you an idea of how high the snow got. The snowpuppy? Gone. Buried under a drift over three feet high.

The thing is, that picture is taken in the morning. The morning when it is still snowing like crazy, when I shoveled the porch and then shoveled a section in the bushes for the real puppy, then came back to the porch and couldn't tell where I'd shoveled. It was snowing that hard.

In fact, I'm not sure that photo above isn't a picture of me.

The kids wanted to get out and see how high it was, too, so we bundled up to walk down to the end of the road and see what our neighborhood looked like.

This isn't so bad, they said as we walked out of the garage.


Then we walked a few more feet away from the shelter of the house.

Not so easy, is it?

That's my eleven year old son, standing in the thigh high snow near the end of the drive.

And here's the others when they made it down, too.

We're not exactly on the highest snow-plow priority, which I think our mailbox is thankful for:

I can't imagine what it will look like when the plows come through. We may not get mail for another three months.

We all were tired by the time we got to the end and sat on a drift to watch the snow fall.

The puppy had his own issues. It's a good thing he doesn't weigh enough to sink all the way.

He loves the snow, though, and bounds through it with exuberance.

Until it wears him out.

The snow bending the trees around here like a giant hand pushing down on them is a bit scary. It's beautiful, but it worries me. I spent all night glancing at the clock making sure the electricity was still on, and scheduling the day around the very good possibility that any moment we could lose lights, heat, computers, water, etc.

Still, it is gorgeous, isn't it?

 

 

It's not supposed to get above freezing for the next week, and in three days it's supposed to snow again. I don't imagine the kids will be back in school until May at the rate we're going.

Good thing we're stocked up on books.