fri, 19-oct-2007, 08:44

view out the west window

view out the west window

We finally started getting some of our winter snow. It started yesterday morning, and it’s been snowing pretty hard ever since then. By midnight yesterday we’d gotten an inch and a half, according to the Weather Service, and I’d guess we now have four to five inches on the ground.

Earlier in the year we went to a garage sale and scored a snow thrower for cheap. Today was my first opportunity to see if it actually worked. As promised, it started right up, and did a great job moving snow around. Unfortunately, the snow isn’t packed down much at all, and so it was perfectly happy to pick up and fling frozen dirt and gravel from the driveway. I think it might be a good idea to drive on top of the snow for awhile, and start using the snow thrower once there’s a better base underneath it.

The water delivery guy said that he used to “plow” his two mile long driveway by running his snow thrower out on one tire track, and then back on the other track. Driving over the cleared areas caused the berm in the middle to get spread out evenly over the driveway, resulting in a nice flat surface. I doubt if I’m going to go the 1.2 miles from our house to the nearest plowed road, but I might try this on the worst section of it. Or the worst section of it that’s close to our house, since there are so many bad areas…

snow dog

snow dog!

Nika enjoys hanging out in the snow, and since she’s black, she’s really good at demonstrating how hard it’s snowing outside. This isn’t the greatest photograph, since I took it through the sliding glass door, but after I let her in, I was just about to snap a photo when she shook all the snow off on my slippers. Thanks Nika!

tags: dogs  house  Nika  slough  snow  snow thrower  weather 
sat, 06-oct-2007, 09:26

Buddy, Kiva and Koidern at the door

buddy, kiva and koidern at the door

We woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow in the Goldstream Valley, and it’s been snowing all morning since. It appears that the winter weather switch has been thrown, so it won’t be too much longer before any snow that falls will be with us until April. Most stations in Fairbanks haven’t been above 40°F since Tuesday, and the snow on the ground will help keep the temperatures low. The last four days at our house on the Creek have been warmer than the rest of town, so I’m guessing that we’re experiencing a warming effect from the warm (relative to the air temperature) Creek water. Once it freezes over, we’re going to be one of the coldest spots in the region.

The photo shows Buddy, Kiva and Koidern waiting at the door to the deck. It’s a sliding glass door, which isn’t exactly optimal when the dogs want to go in and out every fifteen minutes, but it’s great to have all the light from such a large glass surface. We put a piece of 1/8" Lexan over the lower pane of glass to protect it from dog toenails.

tags: Buddy  dogs  Kiva  Koidern  snow  weather 

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