Building "snow forts" where I live

[Mike Ameling]

Yes, I've already had enough SNOW! I'm getting tired of ... building snow forts (also called shoveling out the driveway - it just sounds more "fun" saying it the other way).

From the County gravel road down into my yard. That "lump" on the right is a triple-box wooden wheeled farm wagon.

Looking back to the road.

The old log Granary - and the view across the valley.

And the ... necessary ... back house!

Those "snow fort" walls are around 4 feet high already! I had started some "towers" along them, but the walls kind of just filled in between them.

The pics of my shop just don't show much. Just a huge mound of snow! All the iron scrap is buried!

So, it's ... near ... the end of December, and we already have 2 1/2 feet of snow on the ground. We usually have to wait another month for this amount of snow to build up. And they are predicting 3 to 6 more inches tonight and tomorrow! Rudolph better have his nose polished up bright!

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

 

[drewdunnrespect]

nice pictures mike

 

[wicca]

It's a strange world Mike, it was mild out of the wind here today, sunny too for a few hours (Southern UK) heard a lady being interviewed on the radio who had come from Taranto in Italy...thick snow there as well and that's 10 degrees of Latitude South of me. Us Northern bunnies don't always get the raw deal.. The amount of snow in your photos would bring us to a grinding halt..

 

[jojo]

Was I was a kid, I do remember a few occasion when we had similar amounts of snow, banked up on the side of roads, and yet the traffic still moved, we even had snow chains in the car. Now as Wicca says, just a bit of the stuff and everything grinds to an ignominious halt. It is rare to see even a couple of inches of the stuff. I wouldn't mind though, I'd love to try snow shoeing. I am sure it's probably hard work, particularly if you never had the opportunity, but I'd still like to have a go. Maybe one day.

 

[Mike Ameling]

My brother lives in northwest Arkansa/southwest Missouri - a couple hundred miles farther south from here. When they get 2 inches of snow, it shuts their whole area down. The one airforce base near him had the only snow plow in the whole several county area - 50 to 100 mile radius. When they got snow, it would plow out the whole base, and then ... might ... go in a plow the main street in town.

But it could always be worse! Up along the Great Lakes and Canadian border there is a peninsula that sticks up into the one big lake. It's only around 5 miles wide and 30 miles long. They AVERAGE 22 FEET of snow a year! The record was 32 FEET one winter! That cold air comes down over the lake, picks up lots of moisture, and DUMPS it on them before moving on. A bunch of years ago, Smithsonian magazine did an article on them. The areas around Buffalo and Detroit always get lots of snow from that cold air moving across the Great Lakes and then dumping on them. They get lots of 2 to 3 foot snowfalls. But they always point to that one peninsula pointing it out as an example of how bad it could get!

Right now we are getting freezing rain! So all that snow will have a layer of ice on top of it. And any roadway that was already plowed out will get that ice right down on the road bed.

Rah rah. The fun goes on.

At least I got some new hand-knit longjohns for Christmas. But I think I did something wrong when I washed them. Mayhap I got the water a little too warm?

I don't think they are supposed to be this ... snug.

Mikey - being grumpy out in all that snow here in the Hinterlands

 

[wicca]

Right! it's a diet for you my man..by the Spring we expect to see you wearing those..

I was on visit to Duluth, Nov/Dec in the winter of 1963, that Arctic wind off the lake was the coldest I have ever been.

 

[Angus Og]

But it could always be worse! Up along the Great Lakes and Canadian border there is a peninsula that sticks up into the one big lake. It's only around 5 miles wide and 30 miles long. They AVERAGE 22 FEET of snow a year! The record was 32 FEET one winter! That cold air comes down over the lake, picks up lots of moisture, and DUMPS it on them before moving on. A bunch of years ago, Smithsonian magazine did an article on them. The areas around Buffalo and Detroit always get lots of snow from that cold air moving across the Great Lakes and then dumping on them. They get lots of 2 to 3 foot snowfalls. But they always point to that one peninsula pointing it out as an example of how bad it could get!

Tug Hill Plateau and some info on the Lake-effect snow.