Certainly the storm over the weekend was epic - even from my Canadian standards! It began to snow Friday afternoon, about the time this video was taken. You can see that there was still a bit of snow on the ground, but not much. This was the left over from the 6 inches last weekend! And we believed all the people who said this area hardly gets any snow at all HA!
It snowed all evening and then late at night the wind started to blow. About 2:30am we lost power so of course no heat! It was a little chilly in the house, as it had dropped down to about 65 degrees. Not too bad. Then I tried to look out the bedroom window and this is what I saw. The wind had blown snow so hard it had covered the windows. By the way, this is a second story window!
One of the first things we did after we got up Saturday morning and discovered we had no heat was to hang a sheet across the living room opening so that we could keep as much heat as possible from the gas fireplace. However, with 10 foot ceilings I wasn't sure that any heat would stay in there. But some did and the living room stayed slightly warmer than the rest of the house.
As soon as the kids saw the snow and that it was still snowing they wanted to go out to play. Carlee dressed herself and said "I'm Ready to go outside now!" haha I don't think so!
Instead I convinced them to have a campout in the living room, hoping that with all the blankets they would stay warm. They thought this was so much fun, and they played campout most of the day. They didn't even mind that there was no TV. The best part of the day for them was the candlelight dinner and then after supper Daddy gave them each a flashlight. I laughed and told him that if anyone was going by they would think we were having a disco with strobe lights!
The temperature in the house was dropping slowly, but it was still dropping. It was down to 60 degrees by noon and 55 degrees when we went to bed. We had a couple other inconveniences during the day. With no power we also had no running water which also means no flushing toilets. Thankfully we could light the gas stove so we had hot meals and could melt snow to do dishes and flush the toilet. We had plenty of food and drinking water so that was not a concern, but of course we did not know how long the power would be out.
The next morning, Sunday morning we woke up and it was cold in the house. The thermostat only goes down to 50 degrees and it was definately colder than that, I would guess closer to 40 degrees. We could even see our breath! BBBRRRR Well by now the whole campout routine had lost all appeal and we had three cranky, crying and cold kids. I quickly got them to finish their oatmeal that did not stay hot for more than a minute and we all got on the couch under a bunch of blankets. I grabbed a big heap of books and figured I would read as long as they would sit there. But it wasn't long and thankfully the power was back on.
We lost power for a total of about 32 hours and seeing that our house was down to about 40 degrees it took most of the day for it to warm back up. We are so very grateful that the power came back on when it dod and we are praying for all those families that still do not have power!
Sunday afternoon we went out to play in all the snow. There are places that it is at least 3 feet deep! Here are some of the photos I took.
Remember in the video above there was the little red tricycle. Well I had noticed on Saturday morning that it was still in the middle of the driveway and thought that if someone came in to plow us out they may not see it. Sometime on Saturday in the middle of the storm hubby was going out to get something from the shed and while out there he walked out to where the tricycle was. He said he picked it up and tossed it close to the tree. When it landed it was on its side it would have been on top of a bunch of snow that had already fallen. And it is still covered!!! Just gives you and idea of how much snow we did get! Oh, and the fence does have two rungs on it which you can see in the video as well! The drifting gets deeper farther down the lane, all the way to the top of the fence!
I had to rescue Matty a couple of times!
umm, we are gonna need a bigger shovel!
Here is a little video of the kids and their slide. The way the wind was blowing there was not much snow that stayed right behind the van, well not much compared to the drift! It made a perfect slide! Keep an eye on Carlee, this is not a girl who gives up easily when it is something that she really wants! At the end she says "this is Awesome!" then she says "A Big Slidey Mountain!!!"
This afternoon Hubby decided that he was going to try to get his truck out. Umm what should I say about that, other than I am just going to keep my big mouth shut so I don't get into trouble. Here are the photos, they will show that even a 4x4 can get stuck - oops I am supposed to keep my mouth shut ;-)
So there you have it, our experience of the Epic storm of 2010. Right now it is Monday night and we are still snowed in with a very stuck truck, but at least we have power. Now they say another storm is on the way and should hit tomorrow with maybe another foot of snow! And on top of that the winds are supposed to be much worse so we may lose power again. Isn't all of that simply fantastic! Anyone want to move to Maryland, they don't get much snow and have real mild winters! HAHAHA
Seriously though we are praying for those who do not have power and those who may be out on the roads. We are managing just fine, but there are those we are not as prepared as we are. Please pray for them as this next storm makes an already bad situation much worse for many people.
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