And the snow keeps on going

And the snow keeps on going just like the Energizer bunny. :( We're approaching 100 inches for the season and we've got a long ways to go before winter is over. At this point, we've blown by the usual snowfall we get for the season and have reached the 5th snowiest season since records have been kept. The roads have been so bad that I haven't gone out much.

Here's what the Weather Channel's Local on the 8s showed last Wednesday. This is such a rare occurrence that I had to take a picture. The weather canceled my knitting group's Wednesday night meeting too. I don't like it when that happens. I love my knitting group!

We did get a lot of snow and wind, though thankfully, not as bad as it could have been. It did close the schools and shut down most things for almost 2 days.

My benchmark for bad weather is the blizzard of 1978. I still have vivid memories of that late January storm. {Shudder}} I was almost two years out of college and working for a book publisher. The storm totally shut down the area for days. It takes a lot of snow to do that. The Civil Defense declared an emergency and told everyone to stay at home (or be fined). By the end of the storm, 6 feet and higher drifts totally blocked the back door of our house and the front door you could barely open enough to stand on the porch. Then a drift rose up higher than my head. My dad somehow managed to throw himself through the snow around to the back of the house and the garage. He got a shovel and uncovered the back door. My car was parked outside and was buried so deep in snow that you couldn't even see where it was.

When my dad opened the big garage door, all you could see was a wall of white. You could barely see over the snow drifts. It took several days to dig out the driveway and to the street even with the help of my dad's snow blower. The biggest problem was where to put the snow from the driveway when there was so much already on the ground. (We had a foot of snow on the ground BEFORE the blizzard began.) My dad's snow blower had a hard time throwing the snow higher than the snow level. That first pass down the drive
was the hardest. My mom and I used snow shovels to knock the higher snow down so my dad could blow it out of the way. Then we knocked down some more. We inched along like this to clear the drive.

Our street wasn't plowed for days. The snow was too deep for a normal snow plow. Nobody went anywhere until the roads were cleared unless it was by snowmobile or sled. My hometown hired local contractors to use their heavy equipment (front loaders, graders, etc.) to clear the streets. They used a front loader to clear a single lane down the middle of my street. For weeks, driving around town was like driving through tunnels. In downtown South Bend, there was a huge hole where they had torn down a lot of buildings. They dumped a lot of the snow into that hole (where the Marriott Hotel is now located). The local radio station ran a contest to guess when the last of the snow would melt in the big hole. It was sometime in April before that happened.

I am so ready to move on to spring and leave winter's cold and snow behind me. We're looking ahead to gardening season. We placed our seed orders this week from Bakers Creek and Jung.

It's been so cold that I've pulled out my heavy parka, mittens, and cowl scarf. The cowl scarf is a knitted one that I made several years ago. I like cowls because they keep both your head and neck warm and can be pulled down around your neck like a turtleneck when you go inside. This set me wondering if I could design a crocheted lace cowl. I'm playing with ideas for one using the lace pattern from my Flying Diamonds shawl. I've completed a shortie one, am working on tall one that covers head and neck, and am considering doing an infinity/mobius version too. The pattern is partially written and charted. I'm thinking about names for the pattern.

Bathroom update: Progress is being made very slowly on our half bath. Drywall repair has finally been completed. The next step will be priming and painting the walls. Maybe next weekend. If we don't get a break from the snow, it might not happen even then. Hubby has been kept busy keeping the driveway clear and raking snow off the roof. There's a lot of snow (and weight) on the roof.