Winter Is Wearing Out Its Welcome
LeAnn posted this blog on Monday, February 11th, 2013 at 12:30 pm
I know I should not be tired of winter already because it is at least another six weeks before we can hope for somewhat nicer weather.
But I can honestly say — I’m tired of winter.
If it is not below zero with below zero windchills, then it is snowing a little bit, just enough to make the roads hazardous, or it is raining and freezing on so that the roads and the driveway and the paths are covered with glare ice.
Sunday, February 10, it was both raining and snowing.
So, for the second time this year, I’ve been sloshing through several inches of water that has run in through the barn door and accumulated by the tractor. Enough water that if I thought I could stay on my feet wearing tall rubber boots, I would wear those. Except it’s too slippery outside by the horse pastures to be wearing tall rubber boots. So I wear my big heavy winter boots, but those are not as waterproof as I would like for standing water.
The other time when we got rain and it ran into the barn, we also had a thunderstorm with it. And then it got really cold really fast, with highs in the afternoon of 0 or below zero and windchills far below zero. I needed ice skates that time to get from the house to the barn and into the barn to get hay.
It was also cold enough one night, with windchills of 30 degrees below zero, that my little white truck would not start in the morning when I needed to get into town for a court hearing for the newspaper. I put the battery charger on the truck twice before I could get it started.
The thunderstorm we got with the previous rain storm also fried our heavy-duty extension cord that we were using for the tank de-icers for the horses. That was fun too. I didn’t realize the de-icers were not working until the tubs started to freeze up when the temperature went from 30 degrees in the evening to below zero overnight.
So, I bought $250 worth of heavy duty extension cords — only to discover that if both de-icers were plugged into the same cord, it would blow the circuit in the basement. I ended up buying still more cords so we could plug one de-icer into one outlet on one circuit and the other de-icer into another outlet on a different circuit.
Since the outlet in back of the house where the tanks were plugged in before is blackened with soot, I don’t really trust it anymore to have de-ciers plugged into it. That’s why we decided to run cords in under the garage door to get to the outlets in the basement.
I have to say, too, that I have become completely spoiled using the tank de-icers. It is so nice not to have to lug five gallon buckets of ice back up to the basement and then have buckets of ice sitting around all over, waiting to thaw. This way, the water is always open whenever the horses need a drink, and I don’t have to worry about them wanting water when it’s frozen and they can’t get to it.
Last week, it snowed an inch or two almost every day, making road travel hazardous and not at all pleasant. And I had to drive 140 miles round trip twice on bad roads for a trial that had been moved to another county. Not my idea of a relaxing way to spend my days.
And now on Sunday, we had freezing rain, and snow, and more freezing rain, and more snow, and more rain, and finally more snow.
Actually, it will take quite a lot of rain and snow to get us out of the drought we’ve been in. If I could have my druthers, I’d rather see all snow so it can pile up and then melt *slowly* in the spring and sink in to do some good.
On the other hand, this seems like a more active weather pattern than we had last winter and last spring and last summer and last fall.
Maybe we’re closer to the end of the drought than I think.
I sure hope so, anyway.
And if the drought is coming to an end, then maybe more winter won’t be quite so bad.
LeAnn R. Ralph
February 11, 2013
Next Blog Posting: Thinking of Summer
