The Winter Blues

Winter wasn't terribly bad this year... until February through early March.

Below are a few pictures I took - pretty sure most of them were in February.  Click on images to enlarge.

Plowing the driveway.  Early in the snow season, you push the snow as far off the driveway as you can, because as the snow continues to add up, the driveway gets more and more narrow.  

Plowing about 8 inches across an icy driveway.  It's best to have 4x4 and some weight in the bed of the truck to push a lot of weight across a slick surface.

Shameless selfie:

Snow.  Lots of it.

Driving conditions were not that good.  One thing I find irritating is that the right lane is usually pretty good, but people freak out, and slow way way down.  To go around them you have to get into the crappy lane where there's actually snow and ice, and speed up to pass them.  So you have to go fast in a lane where you are quite likely to lose control to get by some knucklehead who could be going much faster in a clear lane.  Most annoying...

Wind-blown snow moving across the road

Wind-blown snow that didn't make it across the road - AKA "snowdrift"

Where do you put all that snow?  At the supermarket, you make a huge pile off to one side of the parking lot.

"STOP".  Yeah.  Stop snowing!

It was a wee bit cold as well.  Water vapor from the cooling tower stuck to this valve handwheel and froze on it.  And kept freezing on it.

Path from the shop to the house.  The stakes are guide posts to keep me from drifting off into the lawn.

I should have picked up the shop doormat before winter set in.  I had to loosen the augur at each end to get the doormat to come free, and there were pieces way up in the chute that were super difficult to pry out.

The North side of the cooling tower during our "Polar Vortex" event.

I'm pretty glad that things have warmed up.  I'm ready for some precipitation that doesn't need to be shoveled, plowed or blown off.