Thursday is garbage pick-up day at the Aerie and after having two holidays fall on Thursday the last two weeks--and missing the announcement as to which day our pick-up was moved--we had a couple of bags that had to go out to the street this morning.
I opened the garage door and took a step outside and nearly ended up on my a$$ heading down the hill. The entire driveway from garage door to street was a sheet of ice that would have made Hans Brinker green with envy. I made my way out to and back from the street in a very, very careful manner that required stomping my heels in to the ice caked 1/2 inch of snow and looking for any protruding lump of gravel that would stop any downward slide--maybe. Then I got out my spade to act as an ice chopper (very futile act) and scattered 50-75 pounds of rock salt on the drive. You could hear the ice start to break up from the salt but at 27 degrees under a very cloudy sky the use of salt was also a futile action. (Although, it did loosen the ice enough that driving the Tundra--apt name, that--back and forth a bit broken it up, exposed the gravel underneath and produced ridges across the slope that just may provide some stopping power during the next luge event.)
The sun threatened to come out and even peeked from behind the clouds for a few minutes around 1 PM but that didn't last long. Forget about sun spots or the lack thereof, I'd be happy to spot the sun for a couple of days running.
As I write this at 4:30 PM it is snowing like crazy and all the salt I spread on the driveway will be for naught if we get a couple of inches of snow. And that's what the revised forecast from Accu-Hunch is calling for tonight. And tomorrow. And the day after that. (Actually, they are just calling for a "chance" of 1-2 inches each day through Sunday with the high temperatures remaining in the upper 20s. But I'm an optimist(?) and believe they just may be correct--once in a while.
UPDATE: By 5 PM the snow had stopped. The sky directly overhead was clear. The sun (which had already set) was back lighting the clouds to the west. Still, the temperatures were dropping swiftly as to be expected with clear skies and snow/ice ground cover and the sun setting.
1 comment:
I like the whole bobsled/Hans Brinker thing ... our driveway has a sharp drop in it, but it's not nearly as long as yours sounds. We wear ice cleats to walk to the mailbox, though.
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