Never Ending Snow

If you watch the news or weather, you already know that the Northeast has been slammed by snow this winter. We have had a colder November, December and January than last year and yet our heating bills have been cut, maybe even by half. We've moved our bedrooms downstairs to the Second Parlor and Library (at least, that's what they'll be when the house is done), and we heat the bathroom and computer room upstairs with an electric heater.  Ever since December 21, the Winter Solstice, I've been counting the days till spring and have watched for even the slightest evidence of the sun setting later in the evening. I've been looking at the weather calendar on accuweather.com for the winter months last year to see what the actual temperatures were then. That's hard to take because we had a mild winter, an early spring and long hot summer. Oh, that we're blessed so this year. Fat chance!

I've been watching news stories of roofs collapsing under the snow, and when I was at the post office yesterday I listened as some guy talked to another about how he had been up on the roof clearing the snow and chipping away the ice in an attempt to stop the dripping of water into the house. Great. So I came home and climbed up onto the porch roof and shoveled off snow that was no less than 2 feet deep, and in some places 3 feet deep. I broke my snow shovel when I was almost done, so I'm either going to have to get another one today, or resort to invention.

The pics below are from a couple of different snow storms that came one after the other. 

The snow I shoveled off yesterday was about another foot deeper than what you see here . . .

 

Now you see it . . .

 

  . . . now you don't!





And now, with all the plowing, this is how much I see of our cars.


 
The first snow storm dumped so much snow that it came way above the kitchen porch.



This is my cafe table on the left and my Weber grill on the right.

 
 
 It's deeper now than what you see here . . .



It's kind of hard to see in the picture of the mountain of snow below, but there is a passage I have to continually cut through the mountain of snow so that we have access to our gas tank. Every time the plow comes, they block my passage right back up. It's getting increasingly difficult with each plowing. In the pic below, I have it cut down about a foot and half and have several more to go. When it's clear and when I walk through it, the top of the mountain comes to my shoulders.



This is the snow on the step outside the den. I haven't shoveled it at all. I'm just letting it build up and up to see just how high it gets before the warm weather and rains come and wash it away.



And now they're predicting even more snow! I CAN'T TAKE IT!