Digging out

The snow finally stopped yesterday, later in the afternoon. My husband and son shoveled out our very long driveway but were too worn out to dig out our cars. Normally we don't work on Sunday, which we keep for worship and family, but we didn't have a choice. It couldn't all be done in one effort.

The final total snowfall appears to have been about 2 feet, give or take a half an inch. That was based on measuring various locations around our home, such as the top of the trash can lid and driveway. Nearby areas reported more than that, so I don't know whether my measurement is accurate or not, but it certainly wasn't less than what I measured. It just might have been more. Wading through the snow in the back yard, it was above my husband's knees.

It was a lot of snow, especially for our area. We're supposed to get more snow in a couple of days, too.

When I went out to take pictures yesterday, I realized that our neighbor's tree had fallen over and just missed possibly damaging our home. It fell between the wall of our house and the corner post that holds up our porch roof. The top of the tree is resting on our concrete porch. There was a glob of snow where the tree grazed the porch roof as it fell into the gap. How thankful we are that it fell into the gap instead of directly against the wall of our house.

All in all, we came through the storm pretty well. We're counting our blessings.

20 inches and still snowing

As of noon today, the snow is at least 20 inches deep, measuring on the top of the trash cans, which is about the most accurate we can get right now. It's still snowing at a pretty good pace, but the wind is picking up a bit more now, too, so it may be harder to measure accurately later on.

Our satellite is covered by snow. We lost our TV coverage last night. We have to get our news by radio or internet at this point. I haven't yet been able to find a site that lists the total snow amounts hour by hour.

The above picture was taken from our front porch. That's as far as I was willing to go, since I don't want to risk my camera. Everything is white, white, white. It's lovely to look at, but I'm just hoping to get through the rest of the storm without losing our power again. When we lose our power, we lose our heat. We were without power this morning from about 5:30 to 9:15. The house got down to about 65 degrees, which isn't too bad. We do have a wood stove style fireplace that can keep the house warm, but due to my asthma problems, it's a last resort. We didn't have to use it, thankfully.

The forecast is for 20 to 30 inches by the end of the storm. We're already at the 20 inch mark, so presumably we'll get at least a few more inches, and maybe the full 30 by tonight.

The final total and more pictures will be posted tomorrow or soon after.