15" of Lake Effect

It started snowing yesterday and by this afternoon we had 15 inches of lake effect on the ground.  One spot where I measured it was 16 inches, but I'll just call it 15 inches.

My four foot yardstick showing 15 inches of snow.

My snowblower parked under a tree with a washtub covering the engine.

 First I shoveled a path to my snowblower, then used it to clear a trail out to the driveway which had been plowed by the county.

What's interesting is that my pictures look like black and white, but my camera is color digital camera.  The Old Lady once got first prize for a color photo that most people thought was black and white.  Her picture was taken under similar conditions and here on the "Ranch".  Her picture was taken with a 35mm using color film.

 Our vehicles before brushing off the snow and moving them so I could plow the parking area.  Even tho there is 15 inches of snow in front of the vehicles, it is so fluffy that I had no trouble driving them out of the snow.

I used the snowblower to clear a trail to the Jeep plowtruck.  After clearing the snow off the windshield and hood, started plowing.

The snowbanks are so high that the plow rides up them when I try to push the bank back.  I didn't raise the plow in this shot.  After it pushes up like this I use the control to raise the plow so it stays up when I back up..

Update: After the Storm

This morning we woke up to over a foot of snow on the ground.  Shortly after we got up the lights went out.  They had gone out several times during the evening yesterday, so it was no surprise.

Old school light.

 We lit the kerosene lamp and started melting snow for toilet flushing.  The one drawback of no electricity is the water pump won't run which means no water until the power comes back.

Melting snow in case we need water to flush the toilet.

 The one thing we didn't have to worry about with the power out was getting cold.  The woodstove puts out plenty of heat, at times too much.

 The pumphouse has block walls 3 blocks high and the snow is halfway up the wall.  The ground slopes away from the pumphouse, so this shot shows that we got at least a foot of snow.

My Jeep in action.

Finally got the plow going.  First I had to find where I left the battery.  Then when I got it started, it ran out of gas.  Thought about asking the neighbor to plow us out, but found out he wasn't home.  Didn't have any gas as I hadn't filled my gas cans.  Fired up my other old truck and parked it in the field out of the way, siphoned out 5 gal of gas and put it in the Jeep.  Then I had to drive it to where the plow was and hook up the plow.  After all that I was able to plow the driveway.  We paid the county road commission to plow out driveway, but they don't plow private drives until the road freezes.  That's one of the reason I bought this old Jeep and worked on fixing it up so I could plow with it.