This happens from time to time. I sit down to compose a journal entry and pretty much come up blank. I guess I can put a good chunk of the blame on the weather, as it has been cold and windy and that has kept me from doing much adventuring outdoors. It was not bitterly cold all week, in fact we popped above the freezing mark for a high in Tuesday, we even had some sunshine, but I had a doctors appointment in the afternoon that kept me from being able to get out and enjoy things. I did take a moment to stop, close my eyes and put my face in the sunlight as I was walking to my truck to go to the doctors. It did feel very good and even produced a brief moment of spring fever.
The warmth did not last too long, as we were back down into the single digits for highs for Wednesday and Thursday and like just about all winter long, the wind was blowing at 20-30 mph. I have probably already mentioned it, but this has been the windiest winter that I have ever experienced up here and I am now on my 23rd one. For a long time, the winds kept the snow from piling up on the roofs too much and so the roof clearing activities were not called for. About a week to ten days, that changed. Finally, enough show started to pile up and just about all at once there were folks up on their roofs removing the snow.
We do not have to worry much about that here in Jake. For one, we really do not get enough snow to need it to be done and in our case, all of our roofs are metal, so as soon as we have a couple day warm up, the snow comes off by itself. The shop roof cleared earlier this week, but the house roof still has about 12-15″ on it. This old house does not have much insulation in it, so we do end up with some rather large ice dams, but I do not concern myself too much with them either, as the water cannot back up and get into the house with the metal roof.
With the colder air came some snows. Nothing big, at least on a 24 hour basis, but it seems like 2-4″ have fallen in the higher terrain every 24 hours since late Wednesday and we have picked up around an inch or so every 24 hours. The exception as been in the last 18 hours or so when a fairly steady snow has put down around 5″ of fluff. Over time, that all adds up and in many cases, that is preferable way to get it. I do not spend all day moving it around and left with no time for anything else but the website and any other chores. Although this year we have really been void of a big, knock-down storm and it sure would be neat to have one or two of them before spring comes.
Here is a shot taken out our backyard window in the den. It was taken around 30 minutes ago and is probably the average snowfall rate for today. Sometimes harder and sometime lighter. I believe we have officially given up on the ice rink for this season. It turns out that after the flooding around a month ago, only about 25% of it had ice thick enough to support the weight of a human. So when we walked on the rest, the ice cracked and slipped around on the plastic liner. Trying to remove the snow was difficult with that situation and it would have taken a bunch more water to get it completely flooded, so next year we will try again and apply what was learned this season and hopefully get there! To tell you the honest truth, even if we had gotten good ice on all of it, the weather would have kept us off of it for much of the time. So no great loss.
I guess that about covers it for this one. It does not look like too much exciting will happen in the weather department until possibly the end of the week and next weekend, but no snow loss either. So we just keep kicking the can down the road.
Good Night from the Keweenaw..
–JD
