...and now a possibility of an icy, icy driveway

Looking at the forecast, it appears that there is going to be rain coming this afternoon and continue through until tomorrow at noonish. It will also be accompanied by above-thaw temperatures, which, when they hit the packed snow will (initially at least) turn to ice. Tomorrow does not look to be a fun day. Not at all.

In other news, happy beginning to the Year of the Snake!

Not huge amounts of snow, but ice and cold

So Thursday night didn't bring any major amounts of snow on Friday morning, but it did lay down a nice little layer of ice underneath the few inches of snow that did come. It made shoveling more of a chore than I had wanted.

And last night it dipped down to around 6F, which made going out this morning a wee bit nippy. Still, I guess this winter is turning out to be more "winter-like" thank last year. (Of course, the forecast says that mid-day Sunday through 10PM on Monday will be above freezing, with much of Sunday night bringing rain, so it might again be "bye-bye snow," I fear.)

Going to bed after yet another day of slow melting...

... and some people are saying that there's going to be a blizzard. As of 9PM, there was no indication of one, and even the local radar was indicating that the majority of the winter weather was north of here.

We'll see in the morning, I guess.

Snow melting (again)

The temperature is in the low 40s (F), and the forest is both dripping with snowmelt and foggy with the intense humidity. The creek is swollen with meltwater, and it's likely that - by the end of the day - the snow (or the white slush that it now is) will be fully melted.

Again.

Morning snow.

It's snowing this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Bitterly chilly, too.

Cleanup after the windstorm

Last night, there was a mother of a windstorm, and I was worried that I would lose power and that there would be tons of trees down. I woke up kind of late and noticed that the oven clock was showing the time, so there was still power, and (because it wasn't blinking) there wasn't any short power outage during the night. Nice.

Walking outside, I noticed that the forest didn't look like a wasteland of uprooted and felled trees, so good so far. Looking at the lake, I noticed some sharp lines in the ice, and I originally thought that someone had gone skating on the ice, but - looking closer - I noted that it was actually the ice cracking, for whatever reason...

Walking through the forest, I quickly recognized that there likely wouldn't be many downed trees, and so I merely brought along a rake for my rounds and used it to remove all the small debris that covered the main paths.

On my way back to the cabin, there were the only two newly downed trees, both dead ash trees, both along the berm on the western side of the property. Arse. I hate cutting ash trees. However, I pulled out the chainsaw and made some (relatively) quick work of them.

ALSO: When taking a little break on the boardwalk, I saw some movement under the ice. It looked like a snapping turtle, swimming through the water under the ice. I rushed to the other side of the boardwalk in anticipation of watching it cruise out the other side, but no... it must have turned back. Happily for the turtles, there is still some open water on the north side of the lake, so I doubt that they'll suffer from drowning.

Rain... in January?

Last night, there was a lot of rain. Will this turn out to be yet another not-really-winter?