And I thought it was going to be another winter like last year, enough snow to make it seem 'wintery', but not so much to be a problem.
We'd had only a little bit of snow until Christmas, way less than last year. Now it has been made up in "piles". The North West has been on the national news because of all the snow. It was said a record 13 inches in Spokane in a two day period. It snowed here about the same amount. On Saturday I was down in Spirit Lake to take the high school basket ball team to a game. It wound up being an all day event with many teams also playing, so while I was in the bus and watched my DVD's as the teams played, I also watched all the snow falling and wondered how it was going to work out getting back. By the time we all were finally leaving it had been heavily snowing for over eight hours. I estimated over five inches on the bus and cars and all over the parking lot.
It was a nerve racking trip home. Although the road and highway department was out plowing they couldn't keep up with all the snow fall. It was 35 to 45 miles per hour all the seventy miles back. Now driving the buses themselves isn't that bad in the snow. The buses handle pretty well for the most part. The problem is the either too hot or too cold that the heaters are and the new for me problem that the wipers are snow and ice magnets that constantly attract and hold the said snow. It very rapidly builds up to the point that the wipers were actually off the glass and were just going back and forth smearing the snow which made for very difficult forward vision! I had to stop three times to smack the wipers against the glass to break loose and get most the snow/ice off. That procedure was lasting about fifteen or twenty minutes MAX before it was built up too much again. But another of the numerous problems was were to pull over to tend to the wipers? I couldn't tell where the road ended and the ditch or embankment started. So while I'd sure liked to have taken care of the vision problem, I couldn't pull off but at very specific locations. So it was drive by "rumble strips" of the shoulder and the center no passing lines. Luckily no one was speeding that night, and also thankfully there were not too many people out driving around at 10 PM on this snowy Saturday night because the headlights coming my way made the windshield almost totally obscured from the snow not being removed by the wipers. Oh yeah, and when I'd spray the windshield cleaner it would build up and mix with the ice and also freeze even though its supposed to be the 'winter' type.
Only handling problems didn't actually happen until back in town. Making the turn off the highway it's very obvious the side roads have not been a priority at this point and there was about 10 inches of snow up here. As I turned off the bus did a really great (according to the passengers) rear end slide to the left as I was turning right. Same thing happens every turn I have to make to get to and from the school. I finally get back get parked and get going to find I have to dig out the truck. I measured 10 inches of snow on the roof of the truck, there'd been none on the truck when I left.
Except for yesterday (Monday), its been snowing pretty much steadily, it's been snowing heavy again all day so far and there's about a 4 inch build up so far. Like I'd said in a previous post, these are the days I much rather be watching it all from inside at home, I'm covering for a driver that's at a meeting in another state so I've been out in it again!
Other news-
We have street addresses now! It had been talked about for the past two years, but it finally happened with a letter last week from the Post Office. We've also been annexed into the 'city' from the county. So we haven't moved an inch but we've moved to a new city and have an address! I'll be letting everyone know it in the next few weeks. The letter said they'd forward old address mail for a year so it's not any big rush. Nobody can even begin to put up the new addresses until spring anyway!
Well, guess that will do it for this 'edition'. Everything else is doing well.
We'd had only a little bit of snow until Christmas, way less than last year. Now it has been made up in "piles". The North West has been on the national news because of all the snow. It was said a record 13 inches in Spokane in a two day period. It snowed here about the same amount. On Saturday I was down in Spirit Lake to take the high school basket ball team to a game. It wound up being an all day event with many teams also playing, so while I was in the bus and watched my DVD's as the teams played, I also watched all the snow falling and wondered how it was going to work out getting back. By the time we all were finally leaving it had been heavily snowing for over eight hours. I estimated over five inches on the bus and cars and all over the parking lot.
It was a nerve racking trip home. Although the road and highway department was out plowing they couldn't keep up with all the snow fall. It was 35 to 45 miles per hour all the seventy miles back. Now driving the buses themselves isn't that bad in the snow. The buses handle pretty well for the most part. The problem is the either too hot or too cold that the heaters are and the new for me problem that the wipers are snow and ice magnets that constantly attract and hold the said snow. It very rapidly builds up to the point that the wipers were actually off the glass and were just going back and forth smearing the snow which made for very difficult forward vision! I had to stop three times to smack the wipers against the glass to break loose and get most the snow/ice off. That procedure was lasting about fifteen or twenty minutes MAX before it was built up too much again. But another of the numerous problems was were to pull over to tend to the wipers? I couldn't tell where the road ended and the ditch or embankment started. So while I'd sure liked to have taken care of the vision problem, I couldn't pull off but at very specific locations. So it was drive by "rumble strips" of the shoulder and the center no passing lines. Luckily no one was speeding that night, and also thankfully there were not too many people out driving around at 10 PM on this snowy Saturday night because the headlights coming my way made the windshield almost totally obscured from the snow not being removed by the wipers. Oh yeah, and when I'd spray the windshield cleaner it would build up and mix with the ice and also freeze even though its supposed to be the 'winter' type.
Only handling problems didn't actually happen until back in town. Making the turn off the highway it's very obvious the side roads have not been a priority at this point and there was about 10 inches of snow up here. As I turned off the bus did a really great (according to the passengers) rear end slide to the left as I was turning right. Same thing happens every turn I have to make to get to and from the school. I finally get back get parked and get going to find I have to dig out the truck. I measured 10 inches of snow on the roof of the truck, there'd been none on the truck when I left.
Except for yesterday (Monday), its been snowing pretty much steadily, it's been snowing heavy again all day so far and there's about a 4 inch build up so far. Like I'd said in a previous post, these are the days I much rather be watching it all from inside at home, I'm covering for a driver that's at a meeting in another state so I've been out in it again!
Other news-
We have street addresses now! It had been talked about for the past two years, but it finally happened with a letter last week from the Post Office. We've also been annexed into the 'city' from the county. So we haven't moved an inch but we've moved to a new city and have an address! I'll be letting everyone know it in the next few weeks. The letter said they'd forward old address mail for a year so it's not any big rush. Nobody can even begin to put up the new addresses until spring anyway!
Well, guess that will do it for this 'edition'. Everything else is doing well.
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