Weather report

It snowed last night. 

That's not a huge surprise, given that it is still Winter, even if a few days at the end of last week made us think of Spring.  The warm weather was enough to finish off almost all of the snow and ice that had accumulated on the ground and on rooftops over the last month, leaving the landscape generally snow-free.  But the gusting winds that blew for much of Saturday and Sunday heralded a change in the air.  I hadn't actually paid any attention to weather reports this weekend, but yesterday when I started to see Facebook friends posting about predictions of seven to ten inches, I first checked to verify that these were actually local people, and then I checked out the weather forecast myself.  Eventually.

I spent the night at my house.  By the time I headed over there just after midnight nearly two inches of light, loose snow had accumulated.  I didn't clear any snow when I got there, but I did make sure that I left my front gate open all the way.  The last time we had snow - actually, about two inches of ice - I found myself trapped inside my fence.  That would have happened again had I not taken that precaution.  My neighbor had once again run his snowblower up and down the sidewalk in front of my house and the house next to mine, so I had only to clear my steps - which looked more like a ramp than steps -, remove some snow from my porch, and then clear some parking space on the street in front of my house.  My car was covered with seven inches of snow, so that had to be dealt with, too.  The whole operation took about an hour, at the end of which I had to head over to my mom's and dig out her car and clear her sidewalk.

I'm hating this weather.  It isn't the worst Winter we've ever had - I would much rather deal with the ice storm from a few weeks back and last night's seven inch snowfall than deal with the nineteen inches of "lasagna snow" composed of multiple layers of snow, sleet, and rain that fell in the Valentine's Day snowstorm of 2007.  And the sun is increasingly intense, so unless more snow falls soon, all this will probably be gone within a week.  But I cannot imagine how I would be dealing with this if I were currently working.  Perhaps I would be able to squeeze in snow-clearing operations before and after work, or during my days off; if I were still working twelve-hour nights and my days off didn't coincide with the snowstorms, I might have to resort to paying someone to clear the snow for me.  But I'm currently not working, so I have the time to clear the snow myself.