Aerie AM Storm Report February 26, 2010

8:00 AM Friday morning and it's still snowing. The wind howled much of the night causing considerable drifting. Any sign that I had walked out to the street yesterday morning is long gone; as are the tracks I made walking to the bird feeders and the burn barrel, and the tracks of the 4x4 the geologic surveyor made on Wednesday when he drove across the yard and into the woods--all gone, covered by freshly fallen and drifted snow.

The howling wind did clear much of the front deck. Wind hitting the front of the house swirled around and swept the snow off the deck, then, when the wind shifted direction, it blew through the small canyon and widened the exposed area. The middle third of the deck is no completely free from snow for its entire 36 foot length.

Snow is coming down so heavily at the moment that I feel isolated from civilization. It's like walking the road into Shangrila--the fog in the passes obscures everything until you enter the valley. Right now I can not see the valley below. I can barely see the hillside that forms the west end of the property some 200 yards away.

The forecast is for another few inches of snow today and possibly more tonight. I'll get the snow thrower out later and try to figure out which direction I can blow the damn stuff without mother Nature tossing it right back at me. That's not as easy as it sounds since the winds tend to swirl around the house and garage, the wide expanse of the driveway/parking area means I must sometimes "spit into the wind," and the driveway itself runs east west so the snow must go either north or south. The former is often the direction the wind is blowing from but is downhill while the latter is up hill and any melted snow will eventually end up in the driveway. Not wanting a flooded driveway, I try to blow most of the snow downhill and that often gets me dusted when the wind blows back.

Did I mention it's just 20 degrees? And very windy? So the wind chill's probably around 10-12 degrees. I am NOT looking forward to the Battle of the Driveway.

Could be worse.

Terry says that they got close to two feet at her Mother's house in Linden, NJ. She shoveled the walk to the house yesterday and when she went out for the morning paper (Yeah, it was delivered!) Terry says the snow was up to her knees. Mom has a hired hand that will come today to do some of the shoveling and Terry's cousin (my buddy) Joe will bring his snow thrower to bear as soon as he gets house and his Mom's house clear. Terry said that Jessica may have to go to work today since The Mall at Short Hills has a tentative opening time of noon. Since they have a parking garage, the can open while other malls are still plowing the lot. Whether anyone can get there is another story.

Sussex County, NJ and the Pocono region of PA are said to have close to three feet of snow from this storm. Sussex Co. has about 10K customers without power while Westchester Co., NY reports outages to 50K customers.