DC Day Tripping

Welcome to my cellphone picture report of Winter Storm Jonas!

The DC metro area always goes nuts at the thought of snow, so the mere mention of Jonas had us all quaking in our boots. And with good reason: Jonas would turn out to be the 4th worst snowstorm to hit the Northeast as you can read in this article from the New York Post. It affected more than 100 million people in more than 26 states!

Luckily, we keep our pantry stocked at all times so we didn't have to join the frenzied shoppers clearing out the shelves at the grocery store. And after getting some gas for the snow blower we were all set!

Well, I was, because Sandy is considered essential personnel and had to report to work on Friday evening, leaving me to face off with Jonas by myself.

10 pm Friday night: 5 inches

Wow, all the stuff I bought to go skiing really comes in handy now! Although people might mistake me for an over-sized French poodle looking like this ...

An hour later I am "done" ... already a fresh inch of powder covers my tracks. As we say in Holland, it's like mopping with the faucet running!

Shoveling the driveway sucked, but I treated myself to nice run after I finished! I love running in fresh snow; just watching my feet kick up the snow, the silence, the light sky ... I covered a little over a mile at what felt like a 6 minute pace, but in reality was closer to a 12 minute mile haha.

Fingers crossed Sandy will be able to make it home tomorrow!

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Well, it's now about 8 am Saturday morning and I haven't been outside yet, but most of yesterday's hard work has been erased overnight. Looks like we have about 14 inches now. Supposedly, we got some heavier wet snow overnight, which will make clean up even heavier, but on the bright side, they have adjusted our total accumulation down to 18-24 inches.

Sandy has decided to try to make it home despite the snow. Honestly, the snow is SO deep that I wish she would have just stayed at work, or hitched a ride with someone in a high clearance vehicle. Hopefully, they have at least cleared the major roads ...

Guess I'd better suit up and get to work! But first a glimpse from the kitchen window

At least someone is enjoying the snow ... for about two minutes, then they ran back inside. Wimps!

OMG, this is awful! I had planned to shovel the entire driveway, but there's just no way. Not by myself, not with the blizzard whipping around me.

So, I stuck to the bare necessities and cleared a narrow path from the garage to the (untouched) road, the sidewalk, back to our front door and to our neighbors' front door. They're a bit older and the snow was pushed up so high that they wouldn't even have been able to open their door!

One of my trenches. You can barely make out the side panel of my neighbors' car (to the left of the lamppost).

Meanwhile, Sandy is still on her way home and has been for the past six hours. To think that it takes about 45 minutes without traffic! At least one of her colleagues is riding with her, so I'm able to get periodic updates on their progress. Then again, trying to drop off her colleague added a lot of time to Sandy's commute because they kept getting stuck.

The highways are in terrible shape, anything else is even worse. Apparently, they had to dig out and push the car more than ten times, and even ended up getting towed twice!

Finally, after nearly seven hours Sandy is forced to parked at the Chinese restaurant in our neighborhood: Snow cleared from the gym parking lot blocks any through traffic. She will have to tackle the last part on foot.

Sandy is freezing when she gets home, because despite having packed the trunk with anything one might possibly need during a blizzard, she somehow forgot to take her winter coat! But other than feeling cold and tired she's ok. Nothing a hot meal, a mug of steaming tea and a nap can't fix!

And it just keeps coming down!

As you can tell, our street still has not been plowed and I wouldn't be surprised if it will stay that way for some time. Sandy said even the snow emergency routes (that get cleared first) have just one lane open and that only half of the highway ramps have been cleared. Or had been, because who knows what it's like out there now?

Friends who live in our neighborhood report totals of up to 20 inches at this point, but we don't feel like going outside to check; the wind is howling around the house with gusts up to 50mph!

One last picture for the day ...

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It's 10 am Sunday morning and what a difference a day makes; clear blue skies and sunshine! Unfortunately, the snow has not magically disappeared and my trusty yardstick puts us at exactly 24 inches.

You can just make out the paths I dug yesterday:

That turned out to be such a lifesaver, because our snow blower is too small to handle all 24 inches at one time, but by starting on the partially cleared sections and trimming off narrow slices at a time it works! Meanwhile, I keep digging away with my shovel. There's no keeping up with the snow blower, but every little bit helps and it's easier to mark the edge of the lawn and such.

By the time we finish our driveway, the sidewalk and our neighbors' driveway, Sandy is ready for a break, but I'm afraid to stop now ... We probably wouldn't go back out, because once you sit down everything starts to hurt!

So, we move on to the deck

Icicles hang from the beams above deck and the gutter. It's beautiful, but I really hope our gutter doesn't come down like it did last time!

Only one set of deer tracks runs through the backyard. I wonder where they are hiding, because normally, we have several of them visit every day.

Wow, it feels so good to be done! And when we return to the front of the house we find out our street has just been plowed too. Woohoo!

Except, now there's a three foot mountain of densely packed snow and ice at the start of our driveway. I hate to say this, but I think it was actually worse because we already cleared a path to the street earlier; we basically created an easy out for the plowed snow.

The snowblower immediately grinds to a worrisome halt and refuses to start back up, so now we both have to shovel and this stuff is heavy! What makes matters worse is that the piles of snow around there are so high we have to lift everything up to shoulder level and pray that it does not come rolling back down.

Luckily, before too long our other neighbor comes over with his super duper snowblower and takes care of the icy mess for us. I re-shovel the sidewalk where part of the snow has tumbled down from atop the pile and after throwing down some rock salt with the wheelbarrow we are done.

The end results after 5,5 hours of uninterrupted work:

After a quick bite, it's time to rescue Sandy's car from the Chinese restaurant. Mounds of snow line the street by the restaurant.

Unfortunately, the then freshly plowed lot is now covered in snow again and we get stuck trying to make it out of there. We back up. Try again. We dig. Try again. I push. Try again.

Just then a man walks up and offers to help as another guy drops his bicycle and joins in. The three of us push and ... nothing. We push again and gain maybe an inch. This repeats several times. It's not until another man gets out of his car to help that we finally make it.

Time to go to the barn! I check on my horse every single day, so not being able to get out there yesterday was rough.

The barn staff has been hard at work clearing the parking lot and the driveway, but the back paddocks are still untouched.

My horse, Tessa, is happy to go on a little walk to the end of her aisle to check out the snow.

Thinking there was nowhere for her to go, I dropped her lead rope to take some pictures, but she loves proving me wrong and started plowing through the snow!

I love this silly mare!

Beautiful sunset over one of the pastures!

On the way home we stop to pick up Sandy's car from where we'd dropped it off at the gym, but not without hitting the gym first. Or well, the sauna! Hmmm that feels so good on my sore muscles.

Little mountains of snow in the parking lot.

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It's time for another barn visit on Monday, while many of my friends haven't even been plowed out yet! So fortunate, we are no longer cooped up!

Some of the boarders were letting their horses stretch their legs in the back paddocks, so I decided to let Tessa out for a few minutes too.

Tessa's looking at her normal field, where the snow was too deep to open the gate

Eek! My feet are cold now!! I demand you take me back inside at once!

I'm really glad she got to enjoy the snow before it got hard and packed.

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It's Thursday and I believe everyone has been plowed out, but schools remains closed because in many places the sidewalks have not been shoveled and most roads still only have some of their lanes open. What's worse is that they will go down to one lane without warning, creating huge bottlenecks. Add to that, that the cold nights turn the melting snow into thin patches of nearly imperceptible black ice and you have a recipe for disaster.

I decided to have a little fun with mini-Mount Everest in the Target parking lot.

There's a whole mountain range where they've dumped the snow at the end of each row!

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The cats are glued to the window on Friday morning and my heart drops when this is what I find when checking to see what's going on:

That was not in the forecast at all! I quickly pull up the updated the forecast and am relieved to find it should stop snowing by 11am ... except it's already around noon? Uh oh. It's even starting to stick!

It on and off snows for another hour, but luckily no accumulation this time.

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The weekend is here and what a beauty! Keep the sunshine coming please!

The deer have come out of hiding! I was so happy to see this little herd come through looking for food. I made sure to fill up the ~~bird~~ uh, deerfeeders to help them out.

This completes my Jonas coverage. Word on the street is that kids will go back to school on Monday, but we'll see what happens ...

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