Snow Week

Well 2017 started off with a bang or should I say a blizzard!  On Christmas we were dumped on with 16-18 inches of snow in one night.  Then this week, we were dumped on again receiving another 18 inches.  So we now have about 3 feet of snow outside our house!  

Because all of this snow came down so fast and furious, they cancelled school for the first time in like 20 years in Cache Valley!  This was crazy because we had just gotten back to school from Christmas break.  The kids went to school on Tuesday (1/2) and had a normal day.  That night, the storm came in and snowed all night.  At about 5:00 am I got a phone call, text message, and email from the school district saying that school was being postponed for 2 hours due to the winter storm.  This 2 hours was so that the plows could get the roads cleared for the buses.  The only problem with this plan was that it was still snowing pretty hard so once the roads were plowed, they needed to be plowed again because the snow just kept coming down.  Russell was at work so I had to shovel the driveway before taking the kids to school.  There was a foot of snow on the driveway!  It was actually pretty hard work but I did it.  I took Emily to school at 11:00 and then shoveled again and went back to school to take Colby at 12:30.  Colby was kind of mad because the morning kindergarten was cancelled but his afternoon kindergarten was not.  Then I shoveled again and at 3:30 I went back to the school to pick them up.  The parking lot at the school was so snowy and slushy that it was hard to drive through.  When I stopped to let the kids get in, I got stuck!  I tried to drive away and even with the pedal to the floor I was not moving anywhere.  Then as a stroke of inspiration or an answer to a silent prayer, I tried to drive in reverse.  I was able to move a little in reverse and this must have moved enough snow out of the way to give me traction as I put it back in drive.  Slowly, I was able to get unstuck and out of that parking lot.   All of this was done in a full on blizzard!  After school I was going to drive into town to do some errands but as I got down the main road into Logan, I could hardly see anything and the road was super slushy so I said forget it and tried to find a way home.  The only way to get home with out getting stuck again was to go clear down the back roads to the Library.  That way I wouldn't have to stop on a slick hill.  Luckily as I got to Main Street, the plow was coming up the road so I followed it home.   I have never been so glad to pull into our garage and out of the car!  Needless to say we spent the rest of the day inside watching the snow continue to fall.  During the night, the storm cleared and the clouds went away.  Because of this, the temperatures outside just plummeted!  I don't think the temperatures got out of the negatives.  The coldest being around -25.  Because of the 3 feet snow and the subzero temperatures, all of the roads were bad and the buses were frozen so school was cancelled for the next two days.  We weren't complaining.

This is what 3-4 feet of snow looked like in our yard.  Our swings were totally buried.  There was no way we were getting our four wheeler trailer out.  And the driver of the little car will not be found until spring.

Having a snow day from school, was really fun for us.  Even in the cold temperatures, we managed to have some fun making snow caves and slides out of the 5 foot snow drifts.

So we called the first week of January a snow week.  I am glad this is our second winter here rather than our first because it would have been miserable!  As it is, we are a little more acclimatized and we kind of expect the snow now.  We are also better equipped or dressed to deal with it than we were last year.  One thing we learned this week though was that we need to find an alternative source of heat for our house.  On Saturday morning, we woke up to our power out.  The temperature outside was -23 and we had no heat to our house. A Transponder had blown in an open field and the city workers had to search for it through 4 feet of snow.  We didn't know what to do to keep warm so we just stayed in our warm beds covered with blankets.  Russell and I were discussing what we should do about cooking and staying warm.  We decided that if we had to, we could dig out the trailer and use the stove and furnace in there to stay warm and cook our food.  Then thankfully, at around 10:30 the power can back on.  Our house stayed relatively warm only dropping to 59 degrees which is only a drop of 3 degrees.  We realized though that even our gas doesn't work without electricity so we need to put in a fireplace or something.

Happy snow day!!