2022 certainly started off with a storm… or a few in rapid succession.
Sunday, January 2nd I was able to clear the spaces I like accessible by using the little snowplow on my Polaris Sportsman. I got a rerun of that on Tuesday, but Wednesday! Ohmygosh! It started falling steadily on Wednesday and did not let up until Thursday evening. We got a very un-Darby-like 16″ in one storm.
It takes a whole lot more plow than I have to push that much out of the way. I had to fire up my Ariens 24″ snow blower. It was even a bit much for it… and me. While seemingly similar to walk-behind self-propelled lawn mowers, they require significant wrestling – like large rototillers in rough ground.
As a regular weather watcher and practiced amateur meteorologist, I looked at my normal sources to see what was happening and what was likely in store for us. The deliberate merging of warm, moist central Pacific air with a stream from the arctic was blatant.
I really wanted to show that on video as I did with others. See my presentations on reading and understanding the geostationary satellite images: GOES-17.
However, wrestling with the snow took precedence … and used me up.
It got so deep, wet and heavy that I had to call in reinforcements. A great neighbor employed his Kubota tractor while another applied his youthful muscle and hand tools to get places that had overwhelmed me … and that would be unacceptably buried until the spring thaw.
Between the three of us, I am back on top of that white stuff … for now.