Mined from the notebooks, Friday, December 18, 2020. Dug out Wednesday morning, February 3, 2021.
View from the front door of the Mannionville Ranch House, Tuesday morning, February 2, 2021.
Our nor’easter has blown through. Snow stopped falling late yesterday afternoon, and this morning it’s even beginning to melt off the roof. Making quite a crash as it slides onto the back deck. Reminds me, I’ve left this one buried in the notebooks since our last big snow back in December. Digging it out now because history’s repeating itself and I’ve been answering the same questions I answered six weeks ago, with the same hesitation and qualifiers. And, no, I don’t know how many inches we got. Wiseguy, A lot more than “A Lot.” Somewhere just below “Holy Hell”, I’d guess.
Report from the Weather Bureau of the Department of In Search of Lost Time: Friday, December 18, 2020:
Been fielding phone calls and texts from friends and relations far and not too near, all of them wanting to know how we’re faring after the storm. Really, I suspect, they want to tell me how they’re faring. Human nature. At any rate, by way of getting around to their news, they’ve all asked versions of the same ancestral question: “How much snow did you get?” Dealt with that one a lot when we lived in Syracuse. Folks out of town checking on us believed that every snowstorm that dumped on us was an antarctic blizzard that buried us up to the second floor windows, and with reason. I’ve always hesitated before answering the question. The person asking it usually means “How deep is it?” and expects the answer to be in inches. But I don’t judge snowfalls by depth. I judge them by weight, that is, by how much shoveling needs to be done and how hard it’s going to be to do it. By that reckoning, three inches of wet snow is more than a foot of dry, powdery snow, simply because it’s heavier. But I have my own table of measure, not as precise as the National Weather Service, but useful in deciding when to reach for the shovels. Here it is:
A dusting.
Not too bad.
It can wait.
Oh oh.
Starting to really pile up.
Better get out there.
Darn.
This is bad.
Why don’t I own a snowblower?
This is a lot.
A ton.
Pretty deep.
Getting deeper.
Really deep.
HOLY HELL!
Today I added a new line of measure: “Baby Jesus Deep.” The roads are clear, the sky’s blue, and no more snow’s predicted, so this morning I headed to Barnes & Noble to do some Christmas shopping, and saw this on the way:
I think this is going on the chart between “This is bad” and “Why don’t I own a snowblower?”, which is where I had ranked yesterday’s snowfall. Let’s hope it melts before I have to add “Mary’s Halo Deep” to the chart.
We have a friend in Los Angeles who always texts us after a nor'easter to find out if we survived. I always respond by paraphrasing Boston comedian Kevin Knox: *you* have to deal with earthquakes. To survive a blizzard, all you need is beer and toilet paper.
Posted by: Rob | Thursday, February 04, 2021 at 08:46 PM