Snow Melting
Temperatures are now staying above freezing for longer. Yesterday evening we had some cold rain, but that just accelerated the snow melting from the roof of the house and garage. This made quite a racket for a while, but by today, the rooftop snow was gone.
Sagebrush and tumbleweeds in the East Lot emerged from their snowy cover. I don't know if the city managed to get their plow truck here, but the street in front of our house is now mostly clear.
They're not visible here because they scattered when I came out to have a look, but the bird feeder (and the space below it where the little birds spill seed where the bigger birds can get at it) has been mobbed with birds of various sizes.
With the snow no longer dripping from the roof, I could get the large wood box (behind and to my left in this photo) open as well as the small box on the porch (just visible on the left of this photo on the porch itself) open without risking water getting on the Pres-to-Logs and causing them to dissolve. I refilled the porch box and also the smaller box inside the house. As you can see, what had been up to 50 cm of snow on the front sidewalk was down to just a few icy centimeters.
See the sidewalk light in the right foreground? Compare it with the photos we took just after the storm, where the snow had accumulated up to the bottom of the light box. These lights run on low-voltage power that Lisa ran in conduit from the house. It's very nice having these lights marking the sidewalk.
After I brought in the wood (you can see the porch wood box lid is closed, in contrast to the previous photo), I got the snow shovel and cleared the front walk, in order to give the sun a chance to dry out the pavement. I also bagged up ashes from the fireplace (which I'd dug out more than a week ago, so they quite dead; I obviously don't want to set my dumpster on fire) and put them in the dumpster, from which the snow had also melted. When discarding dead ash, I try to put the bag of ash at the very bottom of the dumpster, so that when WM collects it, the heavy ask in the bottom helps push any lighter debris out and into the trash truck.
The current forecast shows no snow expected until next weekend at the earliest. I don't expect all of our snow here to be gone by then, because sheltered areas and places where we shoveled snow to get it out of the way will not have had time to melt, but most of it should be gone by the time more arrives.
Sagebrush and tumbleweeds in the East Lot emerged from their snowy cover. I don't know if the city managed to get their plow truck here, but the street in front of our house is now mostly clear.
They're not visible here because they scattered when I came out to have a look, but the bird feeder (and the space below it where the little birds spill seed where the bigger birds can get at it) has been mobbed with birds of various sizes.
With the snow no longer dripping from the roof, I could get the large wood box (behind and to my left in this photo) open as well as the small box on the porch (just visible on the left of this photo on the porch itself) open without risking water getting on the Pres-to-Logs and causing them to dissolve. I refilled the porch box and also the smaller box inside the house. As you can see, what had been up to 50 cm of snow on the front sidewalk was down to just a few icy centimeters.
See the sidewalk light in the right foreground? Compare it with the photos we took just after the storm, where the snow had accumulated up to the bottom of the light box. These lights run on low-voltage power that Lisa ran in conduit from the house. It's very nice having these lights marking the sidewalk.
After I brought in the wood (you can see the porch wood box lid is closed, in contrast to the previous photo), I got the snow shovel and cleared the front walk, in order to give the sun a chance to dry out the pavement. I also bagged up ashes from the fireplace (which I'd dug out more than a week ago, so they quite dead; I obviously don't want to set my dumpster on fire) and put them in the dumpster, from which the snow had also melted. When discarding dead ash, I try to put the bag of ash at the very bottom of the dumpster, so that when WM collects it, the heavy ask in the bottom helps push any lighter debris out and into the trash truck.
The current forecast shows no snow expected until next weekend at the earliest. I don't expect all of our snow here to be gone by then, because sheltered areas and places where we shoveled snow to get it out of the way will not have had time to melt, but most of it should be gone by the time more arrives.