The Blizzard of 2011

[billroper]

Finally, here are our pictures from the Blizzard of 2011. That name had better stick around here, because otherwise it means that there was a second blizzard. We don't really need that, thank you very much.

	Frozen Goose After spending a couple of hours removing snow from our driveway and front walk, I went inside to thaw out. Gretchen went out with my camera to document some of the fun. And the first thing you see when you head out the front door is our goose, which was not cooked, but rather well frozen instead. (No real geese were harmed in the making of this photograph.)
	The Cleared Driveway And there is our driveway, which I finally got cleared by virtue of having a really big snowblower, even if only a single-stage model. But it did succeed in coping with snow that frequently reached a depth greater than the end of the output chute. Whee!
	The Front Sidewalk Gretchen's first suggestion for dealing with the front sidewalk was installing a wireless doorbell and telling everyone to come in through the garage until the thaw. I thought this was a bad idea, so I set the snowblower to munch on the sidewalk. By dint of great effort, I carved a path out to the steps. The snow on either side is taller than Katie. Katie is impressed by this.
	No Mail Today There was no mail delivery on Wednesday. This didn't surprise us, since there were two feet of snow on our street. More than that around the mailboxes, it looks like.
	The Front Porch Once I got to the front porch, I just pulled out the snow shovel and had at it until I had the doorway cleared out. Fortunately, it was fairly light snow. A *lot* of fairly light snow...
	Stuck Snowplow All of the neighbors had blown or shoveled our way out to the edge of the street. The street, however, was completely impassible, our cul-de-sac circle being filled up with two feet of snow, so we were really happy to see the city snowplow show up to clear it out. That lasted until the snowplow became stuck on its first pass. *sigh* The truck you see there had tried attaching a chain to the snowplow to pull it out. It didn't work, the chain giving way without moving the snowplow an inch. Oops.
	Saved By the Front Loader But when the big front loader showed up, it managed to move enough snow to allow the snowplow to escape. It then went to work on the circle and cleared it out in fairly short order. There are now *huge* piles of snow all around the edges of the circle. I expect they will be there for a long time.

Comments

[hofdave.livejournal.com]

Yep, kinda looks like around here. Thanks for the photos.

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

The crews around our neck of the woods also did a great job clearing the streets. What they did NOT do a great job of doing is cutting down the banks of snow at corners so you could actually SEE what's coming down the street! I had way too many close calls Friday with cars flying out of snow-blocked intersections.

[billroper]

Yup. Same problem around here.

[kizoku42.livejournal.com]

Your city snowplow is kind of small. Probably our township -normally- gets more snow than you do; their snowplow is much bigger. This time you beat us big time.

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

My goose is concrete and gray; he's quasi-slated as the mascot for the garage band that I haven't worked on enough yet: "Nude Concrete Goose."

Unfortunately, a real concrete goose is too heavy to haul to gigs. I've been hoping for a nice hollow plastic one, but they tend to come painted in realistic naturalistic colors, and I need concrete gray. Ah, well, one of these years.

Dressed concrete geese were a novelty for us when we moved down from Michigan to Ohio. When we told later MI-to-OH arrivals about them, they didn't believe us. Until we'd drive past one on somebody's front porch. "Oh, wow! I thought you were kidding me!"