Winter Wallop

We had our first major storm of the winter season yesterday, snow falling so quickly that 20 cm (8 in) of the 38 cm (15 in) we had by evening news time had come in just four hours. Blizzard warnings abounded.

Even so, other areas got much more; I heard this morning that Oshawa got 55 cm of snow yesterday. That's a LOT of snow to have to clear in a large urban centre. Even here it will take the city's plows (road and sidewalk) quite some time to clean up the mess. (And frankly, they do a really poor job of it anyway, particularly the sidewalks.)

I know this is eastern Canada, but it's extremely rare to have that much snow in a single day!

The good thing about working from home was that there was no need to commute to work (just as well, since most buses/routes were cancelled till evening). The bad thing about working from home was that there was no snow day, we all could work anyway.  :-P

I'm lucky to have a very short driveway, but whoever the property management company hired to do the snow clearing this year has done a less-than-stellar job. He didn't clear close to the end of the driveways, he filled in about 4+ feet of the street at the end of them all, so everyone has had to shovel that too. In my case, it was close to thigh-high of heavy, compacted snow chunks. I wisely did about half or so of the shoveling yesterday at lunchtime, then finished it this morning. (A "thank you" to the anti-inflammatory/pain killer Advil for being my "friend" yesterday and today. LOL.)

There's room on only one side to put the snow, and now the bank (not visible above) is so high that I can barely toss the snow up. I really hope that's it for major storms this season, unless we get a significant melt first.

Then there was the little back space to deal with, because I'm pretty uptight about ensuring I have another exit from the property. I know you can't see the depth of the snow from the pic above, but the drifts were crazy deep!

I went out this morning, after finishing the driveway, and cleared a path to the gate, made sure the gate would open. I'd already gone around the side of my unit (climbing onto and sinking into drifts) to clear the gate from the outside, and also to clear the area around my dryer vent and the various pipes.

So we're all ready for round two tomorrow, which, I think, is supposed to be a messy mix of snow/freezing rain.

I'm so ready for spring! How many days?

Take care, all, and be careful shoveling and driving if you're dealing with your own messy winter weather.

Peace.