I am on the phone now with 10 neighbors in about a 3 mile radius organizing a snow rescue team.
Tractors, trucks and snowmobiles. We are all getting together to plow out or pack down the roads into everyone’s homes so we won’t have anyone truly stranded.
The wind stopped despite the forecast it was supposed to blow all day. So before the snow packs down we want to get everyone’s roads opened up. This is going to be a workout but I think we can have everyone un-blocked by this afternoon.
Temp is -7 right now so that’s a lot warmer then we were told we were going to get ---- and we’d better get the work done before it does drop down a lot more. I hope they are correct about next Monday and Tuesday. They say we are supposed to get to 35 degrees next week. I hope that’s true.
Well, I am back. That was a well meaning and dedicated effort -----that failed completely.
Now we have 2 more of the 4WD trucks stuck.
The small tractors were unable to get through the drifts and so we are going to have to call on 'bigger guns".
So we have some calls out now asking for help from a few other men who own earth moving equipment. A Cat D-8, a Cat 950 and a large road grader may be what we need. One friend of a friend has all of them but we can’t get in touch yet. It’s not yet known if he can get them over here however.
But the farm tractors including the big 8WD John Deer and all our 4WD trucks including my own with the 7 ton wench could not get through this drifted snow. So we are now at “Plan B” (as soon as we can figure out what that is.)
That means we have 5 families in the outlying areas that are 100% cut off as of this writing.
I hope we can get the roads opened by the weekend. If not they are going to have Christmas right where they are---- and no one can come to visit either.
Wish me luck. I am going back out now and we will try to hand shovel our way close enough for my truck to wench out the other 2 trucks. Even if I can we still can’t get to the highway.
This is going to be more involved than I first thought it would be.
Well we made some progress. I expect to get the last one unstuck tomorrow. No word yet from the man with the big equipment, but maybe we’ll get dug out sometime tomorrow.
Anna had to walk in, but the snow has wind packed enough to walk on top for the most part. It’s getting cold again however. We have a pile of wood stacked up so we can keep the stove going all night. Here is a pic of her Rav4’s speedometer (left down at the highway) and you can note the temp . IMG_20221222_050441_973 by Steve Zihn, on Flickr
Here is Anna taking a pic of herself just past where I got 1 truck out of the drift. You can see the place over her shoulder IMG_20221222_160410_139 by Steve Zihn, on Flickr
This talk of big equipment brings up unpleasant memories of all the local roads being snowed in in the March 2003 Front Range foothills whopper. We ended up with snow as high as the first story’s eaves. Power had been out since Tuesday and the nearest paved road only had one lane plowed by Friday afternoon. Once that was clear, the electric company could get a truck nearby to restore power. And that’s when a neighbor who had had the foresight to line up his buddy who owned a Caterpillar D-9 gave him the go-ahead. The county’s 6WD road grader (the usual tool in that area) was out of commission, sitting in the shop. Immediately after Mr. D-9 cut the swath, a couple of skidsteers began heading to individual driveways and private roads.
The guy cleared a swath of maybe half a mile that first afternoon. Took another 3 to 4 days to reach the houses in the highest areas. We all contributed to pay for his services. Well, almost all; I heard that one or two households refused to pay anything, and one of them got the biggest benefit–his house was the farthest away.
Szihn, you probably HAVE to give it a good try tomorrow. Unless you want a glacier to start forming!
As I write this it’s 10:22 AM and the temp is 6 above and slowly climbing. It’s said by the weather service the bad cold is passing and we are going to start a warming trend . But as you can see from the link above we have had some deep cold to deal with and when we add the wind to those temps you can see it was a bad one. Working out in temps from -25 to -37 with the winds from 20 to 37 MPH on top of that was really not a lot of fun. I didn’t do the wind-chill calculations because I really didn’t want to know. I had to go out no matter what, so it’s best to gear up for the worst and just get it done.
But one road is now open and Christmas celebrations are back on schedule.
Because when I got up just before sun-up the temp was 19. Now to be clear, that’s 19 degrees ABOVE zero!
And the day is just starting so it’s going to get even warmer. For the last week of the year around here that’s quite nice And I hope the forecast is right because it says it’s going to swing upward in temperature until Thursday and the day-time times they are calling for are in the upper 30s.
That’s very warm for the last week of the year. If we can get a wind with it the drifts will melt down a lot and that will really be helpful. After the last week’s storm I am very happy to hear this news. Now January will still be, … well….January!
So we’ll see how that falls together, but even 1 warm week is VERY welcome.
They say whatever doesn’t kill ya,
helps to make ya stronger,
but stuck here captive in snowdrift
another hour longer,
might freeze-up all strong mortal thoughts
towards weak end situation,
where Mallory’s raison d’etre “There”
overstays its sublimation.
Stay strong, szihn! But don’t forget to duck and cover.
The extreme cold is gone. We now have all 3 roads bladed to a point we can get through. Only 1 lane, but that’s OK. A lot better then it was to be sure.
We has 2 days where the highs got above freezing and on one of them, we had 44 degrees for about 1 hour. Today we had a high or 11. So it’s a bit cold now, but no where near as bad as the week coming up to Christmas.
Supposed to snow a little tonight again and we have a forecast for snows going on and off until Monday, but nothing bad and no super cold temps. In fact the weather man’s prediction is for temps a bit above what I usually expect in the first week of January. So maybe the REAL cold is gone and won’t be back.
We’ve been getting slammed with repeated stretches of wet snow, thanks to the Pineapple Express. More last night and still coming down. I’ve shoveled 9 hrs already, my husband about 6 or 7, and we aren’t even done.
