“And the snow came down and the castle disappeared”

It started out as a Winter Storm Watch with “up to 5 inches of accumulation”.

That was doable, not so bad.  That was Sunday.

Monday rolled around and it became “up to 8 inchesof accumulation”.

I thought “I know where this is going . . ..  20-30 inches, here we come!”

By Tuesday morning I was feeling pretty smug:

Winter Storm Warning – 10-20 inches possible

I reached the “ROTFL” stage Tuesday afternoon:

Blizzard Warning – visibility reduced to less than a quarter of a mile

The snow fell and blew around all night on Tuesday, and continued to fall most of the day Wednesday.  (At this point, I was totally surprised that my mom’s Thursday night flight hadn’t been cancelled like the previous two flights!)

By Wednesday night, the snow had stopped, but the wind was still whipping the snow around.  I opened the front door to get a peek, and here’s what I saw.

Yeah, that’s the kiddies’ play castle, almost completely buried.

And an enormous snow drift in front of the window.  I REALLY wanted to know how deep it was, but I figured I should wait until morning, when the wind would have died down just a bit.

First thing Thursday morning found me on the computer checking the airport.  I found that TWO runways were open for flight operations!  You could have blown me over with a leaf I was so shocked.  That meant my mom’s flight was still on.  Crossing my fingers that she’d finally arrive.

Second thing Thursday morning found me wearing DH’s giant boots to aid in the inspection of the “damage”.  (The boots sort of functioned as snow shoes since they were so big!!)

Since the sun was on it’s way up I took a few pics of the sunrise, as well as various other sundry shots.  I particularly like the one where you can see the ridges left in the snow from the wind.  Seeing stuff like that makes me think, “Yeah, God is pretty awesome and clearly loves all things beautiful.”

And now I bet you are curious to know about the drift?  I went out through the garage, hoping to find a way to get to the drift without marring the beauty of the untouched snow.  Alas, the only way to get the ruler into the drift was to wade my way out there.  And yes, I was wading.   (Look at the pics in clockwise direction.  Picasa wouldn’t let me pic the order of the pics.)

Upper left: getting ready to take the plunge.  Upper right: the snow was so deep I had to have a walking stick for balance and had to lift my legs up out of the snow with my hands!  Lower right: More wading – almost looks like I’m trying to row through the snow, right?=)  Lower left:  I finally arrived.  “But wait” you say “that doesn’t look so deep!”  True, take a look at the walking stick, though, in relation to me.  It’s MUCH deeper in the snow and is actually touching the ground.  I, on the other hand, was standing on the hardened crust of snow left over from the previous snow dumping.  You can also see the top of the ruler, barely sticking out of the snow.

Oh, what’s that?  You want to know the depth of the drift?  Here ya go:

That’s 44 inches, folks.  And now you understand why a 62″ person had to wade through the snow=)

Remember the play castle?  Here it is during the day.  The wind had whipped the snow around such that a little moat was created. See the little blue speck to the right of the castle?  That’s the slide, or what’s left of it!

Just to give you some perspective . . . a pic of the castle, senza snow.

I’m thinking it’s going to be a LONG time before we see this sight again.  And when we do, there’s going to be like 3 feet of mud, so we’ll still be wading out to the castle!

Oh, and did I mention that we now have a 60-70% chance of snow on Monday?  (Up from 40-50%.)  Anyone up for 24 more inches of snow=)