Skip to main content

Winter is still hanging on!

Since my last post, we had one week of 'warmer' weather, temperatures in the low 40s, followed by continuing weeks of winter weather!
After snowing since yesterday afternoon it has finally stopped snowing, for the moment, but there is a "Winter Storm Advisory" in effect until 6 am tomorrow with up to 6 inches of snow that could fall overnight!
That is the way it has been too. The past few weeks temps in the mid to upper 30s in the daytime then back down to upper 20s and freezing at night and many of those nights, from 1 to 3 inches of snow.  Then light, fluffy snowflakes whirling around in the breezes during the day but not sticking because of the warmer air temperatures.

Above and below: all the photos here were taken yesterday morning, 03/08/2017 as we were leaving to go to work. Just showing the overnight snowfall of around three inches. As you can see, the tail end of the truck sticks out just a bit, so the snow builds up in the bed and in the area of the tailgate and bumper.



Above: a 'low' shot taken of the tracks made by the truck tires to try to show the depth of the overnight snow.



Above and below: Out during the drive on the way to town. It can look so pretty! It was still snowing again last night, though!


Also since the last posting, Stacy and I have taken the plunge with both feet, into some long-awaited home improvement projects. We started the total redo of our kitchen project which involves removing and replacing the flooring, removing a wall, taking out the old and installing all the new kitchen cabinetry with a large island. 
We can finally start this because Stacy's father is happy and has decided to stay at the assisted living facility he moved into late January. 
Everything like the original kitchen was only supposed to be more or less "temporary" and now it is almost eleven years later! So improve we will!
In addition to watching and getting ideas from channels like HGTV, we had a designer go to it with the kitchen and we really liked her design. 
I've been taking a lot of 'before' photos and will add them to a post when we get to the after photo abilities!

Right now, though, all this snow is NOT our friend with wanting to get projects done! We are very limited in where we can put things since it is still getting cold at night and there is still several feet of now hard as rock snow and ice all over the area and our property. We have a four to six week lead time on the new cabinets to be created when we order them and are working on the wall and floor first. Then we order the cabinets and hopefully have a place to put them by late April or early May. Our driveway is not wide enough because of the snow build up for any large trucks. 
Also, the county road department has closed many of the outlying roads to large trucks to help save the roads from severe damage with the spring "break-up" when the snow actually starts to melt causing instability with the ground under paved roads and unpaved roadways become bogs from all the moisture in the soil from the snow. So, we'll have to see what the conditions are as the time gets closer. 

With all the snow, there could be snow around until May in the shaded areas. The daily ski conditions report on the radio for the regional ski resort called Schweitzer, said yesterday morning the season snow total, so far, is almost 250 inches! They also extended the ski season to April 15th because of the still wintry conditions. 
Like I had said before, this is the most 'winter' we've had since we moved here!

Well, a quick update for now. Tad

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Life in a Northern Town, In Winter

So, here we are, early in 2018. While our area gets cold, we don't get the  really cold, the cold of Montana and eastward. Where we are, in North Idaho, 30 miles from Canada, we are in a bowl of a valley. That's why we wind up with mostly overcast days in the winter. We are also pretty well protected from the strong blizzard kinds of winds and the weather patterns that are causing the conditions in Montana eastward, a parked high-pressure system that steers that super cold weather up and over this area and into Montana and eastward. We are into, what is usually some of the coldest weather of the year for this area, for a normal year! When was the last of those, normal years, thanks to climate change, whether from natural cycles or what's been changed by human expansion? Anyway, since before Christmas the area has been lows in the 8 to 10-degree (F) range (-13 C to -12 C) with highs in the upper teens to low 20's (-6 C or so). As mentioned the last post, we'd

Yeah!! The Elections are over!!! For now.....

Yes we're sure glad the elections are over, that is a really good thing. But we're even more happy that they're over because of the CONSTANT commercials on TV and the, seemed like, every night calls at home. With the stretched out length of this election "season" (as it was referred to on many programs!), and with those increasingly annoying TV adds and calls to sway votes, we quit answering the phone all together, were really bad and lasted so much longer this time around. And with our ability to see regional TV from other locations in the US and Canada, what we didn't see for more local stuff, we saw the same kinds of things for those areas instead. It was interesting at times, and thoughts of how things could have changed if the actual election had been held earlier with the rush of pro Palin, or if Obama had chosen Hillary instead of Biden, just so many things this time around had potential for some serious changes to the outcome! But we've got what

Other things from the past week

Hornets, Yellow jackets, and Wasps, a very, very bad year this year for them around here!  And not just in our area but most of North Idaho from what we've found out. In fact when Stacy stopped at Wal Mart to buy some new bait for our traps, Wal Mart was sold out and across the street at Home Depot, she was lucky to get there when a new shipment of traps and bait was being opened. She was told by the clerk that their shipments have been selling out in less than a day and as quick as a half hour as so many people are having problems with the bugs! And hospital and doctor visits have increased dramatically too due to stings according to the news. It has been both hotter and dryer than normal locally this summer so mosquitoes were way down, a very good thing!  But now in late August when the "skitos" would be low anyway, the Hornets, Yellow Jackets and Wasps, and yes we have all three types on our place!, have been going crazy quietly building nests all over the