The Weather Outside Is Frightful

Yesterday we got hit with the first snowstorm of the season. We awoke to a driveway full of snow and a fierce wind that made it difficult to distinguish between existing snow being whipped around and new snow coming down. We did a bit of preliminary shoveling before heading off to school and work--just enough to get out of the garage--but I knew that the day's snowfall had only just begun.

Wednesday's rain was an unwelcome prelude to the snowstorm, covering the roads in a sheet of ice made worse by subsequent layers of wet snow and then dry snow for the ultimate in slippery streets and sidewalks. I had the pleasure of driving all over town yesterday to supervise field experience students in the local schools, so I was out in the thick of it all day (neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays this courier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds).

I picked up the girls from school, brought them home, handed them each a shovel, and set them to work while I fired up the snowblower (after first dragging it out of the backyard shed, through the snow piles in the yard, and onto the driveway) and got to work on the expanse of compacted snow and slush on the driveway. It was at least two feet high in spots, and it took us a couple hours to get everything cleared off . . . and even then scattered patches of ice remained. Aargh!

This morning I left before dawn to drive to Sidney, MT to supervise a pre-service teacher (student-teacher) placed in the schools there. The Interstate was intermittently icy from Dickinson to the MT border and continuously icy from there to Glendive (tense driving!) . . . at which point the roads were perfectly clear north to Sidney. And by the time I returned midday, even the Interstate was clear. I made a couple of stops in Belfield and South Heart to supervise field experience students in those schools, and it seems that those towns' snow plow drivers are on vacation!

I returned to a fairly sunny Dickinson (with fairly yucky city streets) while listening to radio reports of continuing stormy weather in the central part of the state. Some small ND burg was reporting 22 inches of snowfall, and parts of SD near Deadwood had 44 inches! The comparatively tiny amount of snow that we removed from the driveway yesterday was nuthin--and even so, it was probably more than we got all of last winter!