I’m not looking forward to clearing the driveway after this.
It’s supposed to continue snowing through most of the day. I was planning to go to the post office, as I’m expecting some packages, but I think I will wait until Monday! My daughter is working on Saturday, which is supposed to still be chilly. There isn’t going to be much of a window to clear the driveway so she can get to work, and I can get the rest of my husband’s prescription refills.
On Sunday, it’s supposed to warm right up again, and stay warmer for the rest of the week, even as we’re supposed to get a bit more snow. Things should melt away fairly quickly.
Which isn’t going to help us get out and about tomorrow!
It was a bit perplexing, looking at the weather forecasts over the past few days. We’d have these lovely temperatures, hovering just a bit below freezing, while the app was saying it was cold.
A few days ago, I could at least blame the wind chill…
As I got up from my computer to do the cat stuff a bit earlier than usual – the only reason I happened to see this while there was still enough light – I caught movement out the north facing window.
Three deer had been startled and were bolting away from the feeding station, which is around the corner of the house from where I was looking, running through the old garden area and maple grove.
Okay, according to The Weather Network, it’s -17C/1F with a wind chill of -27C/-16F, but I’ve been outside for the past while, in full sun and sheltered from the wind, and it was feeling downright tropical out there! Unlike yesterday, this morning I had all sorts of cats to greet me while I did my rounds.
On the down side, when I got to the van to head into town, I discovered a frozen present on the roof, all down the side door of my van, and even on the ground, from a cat in the rafters. I saw Nicky the Nose in there earlier, when I double checked to make sure the van was plugged in. Nasty bugger shat all over our van!
Ah, well. I meant to get a car wash before taking it in to get the brakes done, anyhow. :-/
Heading to town today, we were glad to find the roads had been plowed of drifts – though my daughter did have to fight one to open the gate! The high winds we’ve been having have really hard packed the snow. It was still blowing a lot on the roads, coming almost directly from the north, but here at home, we have trees, and the house itself, blocking most of the north winds. There’s just that one gap between the maple and spruce groves that acts as quite the funnel!
Yesterday morning, when I went outside to feed the critters and do my rounds, it had already been snowing for quite some time. I had to brush several inches of snow off the platform bird feeder, but the deer feed just got put on the ground in the usual places.
Of course, it got completely buried.
By this morning, when I went to put more feed out, I found this.
Can you tell the deer were here? :-D
That is all deer tracks, except for my foot path closer to the house, and you can see where they dug into the snow to reach the feed (where you can see I’ve placed more feed).
There were a lot of fresh tracks under the overhanging branches of the spruces, as well as by the apple trees, and paths from where they jump the fences to get into our yard.
It looks like we got a lot more visitors than our usual group of 3, plus the loan buck! Either that, or they just came back more often.
Little Susan had an appointment with the vet, yesterday, and she is now recovering from surgery!
Since we had to make sure to 1) have her available to take to the vet in the first place and 2) make sure she didn’t eat anything after 8pm the night before, we brought her into the house as quickly as we could catch her, the day before.
It’s not that she was actively trying to escape us. She just wasn’t interested in being picked up or anything.
As the weather has gotten colder, seasonal changes are happening to our morning routine. With the outside taps now closed for the winter, and water starting to freeze, we are back to bringing out a pitcher of warm water to refill the cat bowls outside.
With the bird bath now moved next to the bird feeder (which I was able to give a good scrub down before winter – after knocking the ice out!), adding warm water to there is now part of the routine. Who knows. Even the deer might be able to use it over the winter. It doesn’t hold a lot of water, but we can refill it as needed.
This morning, the cats were wildly curious about what I was doing at the feeding station, and I had cats jumping up into the bird bath before I could finish emptying the pitcher!
I’m still having difficulties uploading images, so I’ll have quite a bit of catch-up to do later. So far, I’ve been able to upload a few photos here and there, but not enough to do even one complete post with them! The rest of the family is having slow uploads on their machines, too, so it seems like it’s our internet, even though downloads seem to be unaffected.
For now.
The predicted snow and stormy weather has arrived. When I drove my daughter to work, we had some freezing rain, but just barely enough to feel it. We started to drive into snow the closer we got to town.
After dropping her off, I stopped by the lake to see the conditions. It took a while, but I was at least able to upload this video.
I was being pelted with freezing rain as I took this, so I didn’t stay out long. By the time I went from getting this video to getting to a gas station, just a few blocks away, the freezing rain had become blowing snow. On the drive home, I was heading right into the oncoming storm! Visibility was down to about 150 meters, if that.
As I write this, the winds seem to be doing down – at least for a little while. It’s supposed to continue snowing through tomorrow, then be rain and snow on Saturday. By Sunday, it should clear up. Which is good, because we are having Thanksgiving dinner that day with my old brother; we’ll get to finally meet their first grandson! I certainly hope the highways are good, because they’re driving in from out of province. :-( Looking at the weather radar, this storm system is coming almost straight up from the US, so they should be clear for most of their drive. Unfortunately, the most severe part of the system looks like it’ll pass over the city. My brother’s place may get some of that, too. While they may not get the worst of it, they’re definitely going to get hit harder than we are. My nephew and his family will have to drive through that to get to my brother’s.
After this, things will start to warm up a bit and I expect that, locally at least, the snow will not stay. Which is good, because we still have some winterizing to do out there!
The Re-Farmer 