Haven’t been out with a yard stick, but I’m guessing we have about a foot of snow outside this morning. Well before the bulk of the present storm hit, there was about 5 inches of new snow as a prelude, so …well over a foot most likely.
Our little battery-powered snowblower will be completely inadequate against this newest deposit, so it’s either shovels or hope that we can find someone with a snowblower and an above-average sense of compassion. The parsonage isn’t a corner lot like our previous home, at least, so all we need to clear (“all”?) is the front sidewalk and the driveway. Still, that’ll be enough work with drifts knee- to waist-deep. My great-grandpa died of a heart attack clearing snow, so this much already has me anxious, until I remember that there are five of us home now, one of whom is my 17-year-old son who, frankly, could use some physical exertion. We’ll get it cleared.
The fancy new LED display sign on the Methodist Church across the road says it’s 19 degrees, but Sam, coming in after refilling the bird feeders and checking to be sure the furnace exhaust vent was clear (that last task was at my request), says it feels much colder with the wind —silence or not.
One strange thing I noticed, peeking my head out the front door this morning: the quiet. It’s still snow-quiet, despite the wind. It’s windy enough that the view outside my living room window is a field of white, save for the withering ash tree in the front yard and the pale yellow outline of the school buses across the street. When it’s a white-out in town, you know it’ll be that much worse out of town just a few miles, with nothing to break the wind or the landscape. It’s windy, but there’s still that silence that comes from a thick blanket of snow.
The kids are still asleep, or at least in their rooms yet. I’m not quite to my second cup of coffee, and I have two courses to finish preparing this morning. They’re both ahead of plan, though, so I might get a few days clear for writing once they’re polished up and ready to go. Syllabi were finished before New Year’s, so it’s just the fiddly details that need arranging and fixing on the website now. With online courses, most of the work is done before the course starts, then it’s mainly grading —and for the literature class, orchestrating a few Zoom discussions. This will be the first semester I’ve taught two different courses at the same time, so this’ll be a fun adventure.
Bird count this morning: the usual neighborhood nuthatches and juncos, and we finally caught a picture of our resident downy woodpecker, Robert (Robert Downy Woodpecker), at the window feeder.
We’ll see if they get enough of this cleared for school to start on time tomorrow for Corwin. For now, I’m just grateful we’ve nowhere to go today, and we’re all home and safe.
