Well, the worst of our first blizzard of the winter hit us last night. The snow has stopped, but we are still under Orange Alert (severe, rather than red for extreme – that’s to the south of us, and into the US) blizzard warning. Today is supposed to be high winds, with snow starting again tomorrow. We’ve already passed our high of -21C/9F (wind chill, -43C/-45F) and are expected to slowly drop in temperature to -31C/24F in the wee hours of tomorrow morning.
The wind direction was the worst for our set up. It drifted snow all across the front of the house, and snow blew into the food and water bowl shelters. I had the snow shovel close to the sun room, so I only had to push through a small snow drift to be able to reach it.
There were LOTS of cats in the sun room. The nice, warm sun room.
I’ll start with some before and after slideshows.
You can see the handle of the snow shovel in the door’s window. Easy to reach, thankfully.
There was no sign of the path through here before. There was a bit of drifting into the entry of the covered greenhouse, but the thermometer in there was reading 0C/32F!
First priority was to dig out in front of the sun room and get to the isolation shelter, clearing the greenhouse entry along the way. I’ll have to go back later and clear the well cap. It’s completely buried and at least partially now covered by the snow I dug out to clear the path. I wanted to make sure to move the snow away from the house, so there are fewer issues with snowmelt at that corner by the basement window in the spring.
The bottom of the shelf shelter was almost completely blocked by drifted snow. That cover is sure doing its job, though!
I had to dig around the isolation shelter – that entry was almost completely blocked – to reach the windows on each side, and top up their food and water. There were six cats in there, all warm and cozy, watching me dig.
Clearing the kibble and water bowl shelters took a bit more doing. Once I cleared the snow in the middle, I dug out the kibble trays and dumped them out, then tried to clear out as much snow as possible, without taking all the straw out. The heated water bowl was completely full. No cats were going there to drink! I got as much snow as I could out of there, taking the bed and cat cave out and clearing them of snow, too. There was even snow piling up in front of the cat house entry, which I cleared. There were no tracks in the snow, so no cats had used it all night, but after I cleared it, I spotted the white with grey tabby spots inside, looking at me through the window. When I saw her earlier, she had come out from under the storage house, so I was glad to see her in a cozy bed in the cat house.
I neglected to take a “before” picture to the catio. Almost all the area to the left of the first photo had been cleared to make room for the truck. Now, you can’t even tell. It was all blown over, flat with snow.
I only dug one path to the catio door. I didn’t bother clearing the shrine feeding station yet. The food dish had been shoved off to the side, so clearly some critter had been digging around in there, looking for kibble. A small amount of snow did blow in through the opening, but just a dusting.
The rest will have to wait. It’s getting colder and it’s just too windy. I didn’t even try to clear the steps in front of the main doorway, nor the sidewalk. Once this all blows over, we might be able to get little Spewie out, but it’s not going to be easy for that little thing to get through the drifts, so we’ll be doing a lot of shoveling.
The important thing is, the yard cats have food and water and shelter.
Gotta have priorities!
Speaking of priorities, I have an update on my mother. My brother called the hospital this morning, but the new shift were in their morning meeting still, so he was asked to call back later. The nurse he spoke to was able to tell him that my mother did well overnight, though she struggled to go to the washroom, so they brought her a commode. The alarming thing, though, was that they were talking about sending my mother home!
Aside from the fact that my mother should not be going home at all right now, my brother pointed out it wasn’t even possible. All the highways are closed. The nurse was quite aware of that. When her shift ended last night, she couldn’t leave. Not even to go to a hotel. She spent the night in the hospital and just started her shift in the morning.
!!!
When my brother called back, he was told they were still monitoring her. They were putting her on an IV with a diuretic to try and get the swelling in her legs down. No doctor had arrived yet. Which isn’t much of a surprise, considering the road conditions. At the very least, we know they won’t try to discharge her from the ER until a doctor sees her today. However, they also can’t admit her to the hospital until a doctor sees her, either. So she’s stuck in the ER.
I’m just flabbergasted that there was even a possibility of her being sent home, even if the roads were open. I strongly suspect my mother is in her “I don’t want to bother anyone” mode and downplaying her issues again. Which she only does when there really are issues! When it comes to minor complaints, she has no problem “bothering people” at all, and expects us all to drop everything and cater to her. But when she’s have real struggles, suddenly it’s the opposite.
My mother’s biggest problem is that she’s too flipping strong and resilient! So she can “pass” as being better than she actually is.
I’ll be calling the hospital myself to check on her soon. I forgot to mention my mother’s kidney function concerns. I have no idea how much of her file they can access.
So it’s still a waiting game. None of us can do anything right now, regardless. I checked the provincial highway status map earlier. The closed highways are marked in red. The bypass highway around the city is shut down – all of it – so it’s completely encircled in red. Pretty much every highway leading to the city is also shut down, including four major highways heading north, in our direction. Right now, the map looks like a giant red spider with its body over the city, and red legs sprawling out over half the province in all directions.
I also checked the local highways group I follow on FB, as they tend to be much faster with information than the provincial website. It was filled with posts from people talking about zero visibility. The most recent one was someone who had tried to use the highway that goes past our place. They made it as far as the large town our doctor is in before turning around and going home. It was simply too dangerous. Everyone was saying, stay home if you can.
Not that we can do anything else, until we can clear the driveway. Which may not happen until Saturday, since we’re expecting more snow tomorrow (Friday).
A good day to drink lots of hot tea, and listen to Christmas music. Like this remarkable cover of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.
What an amazing instrument!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 