MY SNOW IS ALMOST GONE

        I've had a bit of a struggle with the blog lately. I've been very busy. Topics come to my head and by the time I get to pencil and paper the topic is gone.

        However , today I have something to write about that was planned for me by somebody else.

        I want to tell you that my winter snow is about 90% gone. There are only snow banks on the north side of something or in a very sheltered spot.

       So I went out to get some photos of my gone snow. 

       Well, I found some other things and some things I didn't find quite soon enough.

       I noticed  that a large tree trunk had fallen and the the bark was stripped off the branches close to the ground. I had to check this out. From a distance I thought it would have been a porcupine. When I got there I discovered that it had been deer that had chewed the bark off and nipped all the end twigs. Most nights deer had gone through my yard so I was not surprised by the evidence.

     Now I was so interested in the evidence of the trees being chewed that I missed seeing the larger bulk if the evidence. Since the deer had stayed in this area most of the winter they had left a massive amount of droppings. I didn't see the droppings quite soon enough. They were in a consistency where they mushed and really stuck to my shoes!

    So you see the deer gave me my topic today.

ONE SHOULDN'T SNICKER

    When I was still teaching one year on the last day before Christmas holidays a kid came to the concert with a newly broken arm. I said to the kid that I had never had a broken bone.




     Well guess what? The next day I fell and broke my wrist. Worse than that I was doing the Christmas bird count so I was fair game for all kinds of ribbing like " I didn't know birding was a dangerous sport. "

     Well on my last post I made a few remarks about people who have spring weather that is ten times better than mine and they still wanted better weather. I should have known to keep my mouth shut. 

    Over night we had 15 to 20 cm of snow. Lovely soft white stuff just made for shoveling. The snowplow had just finished yesterday. 

    Why don't I keep my mouth shut? 

SNOW

      We just had a couple of days of snow where we got about 12 cm of snow. That's a lot of snow for us at one time . I know other places get much heavier snow falls.

      It kept me busy shoveling snow a couple of times. However the snow was light , dry and powdery which makes it easy to shovel.

      The snow gives us a very clean fresh look so why not a few photos.

       This photo is for Far Side. She wants people to set up snow sticks so here's my feeble effort at a snow stick. Can you see it? I have 14 in. (35 cm) of snow.

Snowstick Worries

    Now I've posted about my snow stick on a previous post. Far Side got me into setting up a snow stick so we could compare snowfall amounts.


    Me being somewhat lazy and disorganized went out and thought if I put my snow stick on a table in the yard, I won't have to get my boots full of snow and it will be easy to take photo. In other words, I won't have to bend down to get a photo. I reasoned that the table would show an even level amount of snow. My plan worked well.

    We've had some mild spring like weather. The snow on the table melts faster than snow on the ground. Snow melt is influenced by shade or direct sunny spots. The snow melts on the south side of the house first. So now I'm left with a bare table. No snow! I also found that there was a pot saucer on the table so that my snow stick didn't get to the table surface.

The snow table

     Now we still have tons of snow around. There's still lots of snow and ice on the roads.

Snow in the yard

Snow in the front yard where I shoveled snow off the driveway.

     Now next year I'm going to have to improve on my snow stick. Maybe I should get one of those super dooper snow measurers they use on TV weather to show how much snow we receive. Then I could go on YouTube and give my own weather report.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

     There' only one thing wrong with this scenario. It ain't Christmas!

      Yesterday we had 10 cm (4 in) of snow. Not heavy wet spring snow but dry powdery winter snow. To add to this we get about the same amount of snow over the next two days.

My standard snow post

      Now I know that 10 cm is not a lot of snow for some places. The Canadian Maritimes had 50 cm (20 in) yesterday. However, some years our winter total of snow is only  10 cm. 

The juniper always catches a good load of snow

    As  for now, I might as well enjoy the snow and not crab so that people will look the other way.

My lamp shade is another standard for measuring snow

Another Good Dump of Snow

      Last night we had another 5 cm of snow and it snowed all day. This spring storm was forecast for Alberta so we were expecting it and it wasn't a big surprise. I looked out at 3 AM and the sky was full of snow as it was snowing heavily. So by the end of the day we had a good dump of snow.

      Now some of you may be saying, "Why is he telling me about all the snow?"  I know that some of you do not want to hear about snow at all. But I thought if I tell you about all the snow here it will make you feel so great that you don't have snow. Probably 95% of readers will be in the no snow category. 5 % will still be in winter mode so it doesn't matter.



March snow



     Heavy spring snow storms are common here. We get most of our snow in March. It doesn't worry me as I know that our snow will disappear quite quickly as the days are lengthening rapidly. The sun rose at 7:38 this morning and sets at 7:49 tonight so we get a little more than 12 hours of sun.

     I saw the first crow yesterday which is a good sign of spring. This morning at 7 AM about 20 crows were sitting in a big poplar tree about a block from my house. Crows are very hardy birds and they will have little difficulty putting up with a spring snow storm.