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"Historic" Snowstorm ... Feb 1, 2011

Hey, that's the term they used on The Weather Channel, so don't look at me that way ... and maybe it's historic for them because they're all, like, 24 years old.  But I digress ...

Beverly tells me that it was just starting to snow when she went into work at 5:30am ... on top of just a little bit of ice from the previous 18-20 hours ... she stuck it out until almost 9am.  I went out at 8:30 to shovel off her side of the driveway, and there was already about 3" on the ground by then.

This first set of photos was taken at midday, shortly after we went out and cleared the entire upper driveway and half of the lower driveway.  About 8" at that point, with significantly more in the areas of our driveways that tend to drift (the driveways are on the east and south sides of the house, so they tend to drift a lot). 

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Upper driveway

Lower Driveway

Measuring stick in front yard

Measuring stick in back yard

One of my neighbors, with a very cool shovel

Not only does he have a cool shovel, but he has lots of friends, too!

Note: I artificially increased the contrast and decreased the brightness of the
two driveway photos to give them more detail, which is why they look weird.

Here are a few comparative photos from later in the afternoon, after our final attack on the driveways for the day:

Upper driveway

Lower driveway

Measuring stick in front yard

Measuring stick in back yard

And I took these at about 9:30 Wednesday morning after the storm had moved through ... still no sign of a snow plow, and most of the state offices had announced that they were closed for the day, so we'll go at the driveways again this afternoon when it warms up (hoping for 15°-18°F!) and the wind dies down a bit:

Upper drive

Another view, showing the drifts a little better

Lower drive ... our man-made drift in the middle served its intended purpose and helped a little

Front sidewalk ... you can see where we tried to keep up with it, at least

Whole house, viewed from the street corner

My neighbor's grill ... made me smile

I didn't take more photos of the measuring sticks because they had actually gone down, which means that the wind took over at some point so those values aren't accurate ... I've heard that the snowfall in Jeff City as of last night was about 18", but I'll wait until I find some official numbers to verify that.

Okay, last set, taken after we cleared one path in each drive at about 1pm ... our thermometer read 21°, and the breeze wasn't too bad, so it was fairly comfortable out there.  You can see that the entrance to the street from the upper drive still has a very tall (about knee high) drift, which we are hesitant to clear until the snow plow comes through (hopefully before dark!).  We had just finished clearing the lower drive to the edge of the street when one of the developers came by with his big skid steer and opened up the entrance (5th photo) ... he was clearing a single path in the street, and was stopping by anyplace he saw someone shoveling to clear their entrance, which you can see in the 6th photo.

Upper drive area

Upper drive

SE corner ... snow on roof

Lower drive

We got a little help out at the street entrance

Neighborhood view ... more skid steer evidence

 

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