The end of October, when people are preparing for Halloween, Election Day and SNOW? On October 28th we had the surprise of our lives with a Nor'easter that dumped over a foot of snow on our little mountain top. The weather forecasters (as my husband says, people who never get fired for getting it wrong) predicted 1 to 4 inches with a slight possibility of more 'in higher elevations.' Where are we - Mt Everest? We are only a little higher than Scranton, but we got creamed when they received only a dusting to 2 inches. Of course, we are on the weather line, but people in the next town over did not get even 3 inches of snow. 
Okay, so the snow is one thing, but we also lost the cable/Internet connection first, then all power for over 24 hours. My husband and I were so unprepared. We should have drawn water, gotten lanterns/flashlights/candles ready. We should have had wood for the fireplace. We should have had food. We should have parked the car at the end of the driveway. We should have had our winter clothes unpacked, including boots...
For a total of two days we were stuck at the top of our hill, one car in a snow bank, the other buried and without snow tires. We had no heat, as the new boiler furnace was to be installed on October 30 (there is timing gone wrong) and with no electric we could not run space heaters. We had no water, because we have a well with a pump, so we got our old charcoal grill out and melted snow to flush the toilets ("a hobo fire") - fortunately we had just bought bottled water for drinking. It was cold, dark, and we were just getting to the point of calling a taxi, mushing through the snow to the road - which was clear - and staying at a motel when the power came back.
For a total of two days we were stuck at the top of our hill, one car in a snow bank, the other buried and without snow tires. We had no heat, as the new boiler furnace was to be installed on October 30 (there is timing gone wrong) and with no electric we could not run space heaters. We had no water, because we have a well with a pump, so we got our old charcoal grill out and melted snow to flush the toilets ("a hobo fire") - fortunately we had just bought bottled water for drinking. It was cold, dark, and we were just getting to the point of calling a taxi, mushing through the snow to the road - which was clear - and staying at a motel when the power came back.
So why didn't we leave and stay somewhere else sooner? Well, experience tells us that power does not stay off that long and we wanted to stay here for our pets and in case anything else happened - like pipes bursting, or whatever.
Things work out eventually. We have power, we have our new heater, and we got one car out to make it to the store. The other car is still stuck in a snow bank, (that happened when we tried to drive it out of its parking place and skidded down another hill on our property) but we are expecting a spate of 60 degree days, so it should be melted out soon. Then again, can we trust what the weather people say??? I think we will be buying a large, gas powered snow thrower soon - our current model is electric and a lot of good that did us.
1 comment:
I thought about you and your DH when my DH and I were watching the Weather Channel around the time that the snow was doing it's thing.
Snow in October....the mind boggles!
Hope things are going much better!!!
Best wishes,
Laura
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